Tuesday, 30 August 2022

Bills

Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms HUTCHINS:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Croydon.

Mr HODGETT (Croydon) (15:45): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I do not think I have had the opportunity to date to congratulate you on your elevation to the Deputy Speaker role. I am still catching up with a number of people on your side that have had changes, so congratulations on that role, Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to rise as the lead speaker on our side to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Perhaps at the outset I might just make a few comments about process and then signpost my intention to work through my contribution on the bill. A number of people in the house today and certainly at other times have talked about process and procedures in this place to ensure the smooth running of the Parliament. One of those processes is certainly the introduction of legislation and how as shadow ministers we need to quickly prepare in between sitting weeks to be able to go and consult stakeholders, have a bill briefing, form a view and put positions through party room processes to actually arrive when the bill is put on the government business program and brought on for debate. Part of making that process run smoothly of course when legislation is introduced is to organise a bill briefing, so I do want to just put on record at the outset my thanks to the minister and in particular her senior advisers and staff in early childhood, Enrico Burgio, Martel Menz and Daniel Benjamin, if I have got those names correct, who organised the bill briefing and were very helpful in terms of walking us through this piece of legislation. Indeed I think it was Enrico who followed up—there were a couple of queries we still had, and a few days later or a week or so later he was able to follow up and clarify those matters for us. I do thank the minister’s staff and advisers, because it does help the process run smoothly of us getting to the stage where we can prepare between sitting weeks and get back to actually make a worthwhile contribution on the bill.

What I intend to do in my time available is to, as is the custom of the lead speaker, outline the purpose of the bill and the main provisions of the bill. It is important, although often a bit dry, to go through and put on record the purposes and main provisions of the bill, and I will take the opportunity to do that. I do want to discuss a few matters that were raised with me but that we got clarification on—and we were happy with that—and then conclude my contribution on the bill.

I should say at the very outset that we are not opposing this bill. The bill is about making several amendments to make child care safer for children and lift the quality of services. The amendments have the full support, as I understand, of the early childhood sector and stakeholders in Victoria and across Australia, endorsed through a review process, which I will come back to speaking briefly about. So as such a position of not opposed has been adopted by us on this side of the house in terms of our position on this bill.

By way of background, I should just touch on that before I move to the main purposes of the bill. The bill seeks to enhance the regulatory system for early childhood education in Victoria and nationally. The bill proposes various amendments to several acts, and I will outline those in my contribution. This follows the 2019 national quality framework review aimed at ensuring that the NQF continues to meet its objectives and considering the ongoing effectiveness and sustainability of the NQF considering the continuing evolution of the education and care sector. A meeting of the education ministers on 6 May 2022 endorsed the final 2019 NQF review, and that is how we arrive where we are today, if you like, at this bill, making those changes. Whilst there is a long history here, and where Victoria sits in taking the lead on this, I am sure there are many on both sides who will in their contributions talk a bit about that process and where we sit there.

But if I move to the main provisions of the bill, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 amends the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 to implement the recommendations arising from that 2019 national quality framework review and some additional minor policy decisions by the ministerial council, comprised of the ministers with responsibility for matters under the Education and Care Services National Law, at the education ministers meeting. It also amends:

the Children’s Services Act 1996 to maintain alignment with the Education and Care Services National Law;

the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, the Children’s Services Act 1996 and the Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2021 to provide that the Secretary to the Department of Education and Training, as the Regulatory Authority for Victoria under the Education and Care Services National Law and the Children’s Services Act 1996, is the integrated sector regulator for the Child Safe Standards for the early childhood sector in Victoria;

the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 to remove the redundant requirement to table the annual report of the National Authority in each house of the Victorian Parliament.

I will come back to that. That was a matter that a couple of my colleagues on this side of the house raised. I did seek clarification at the bill briefing, and I was satisfied with the response given by those present for why that change is required and why it removes that redundant requirement to table the annual report of the national authority in each house of the Victorian Parliament. Moving then to the main purposes of the bill:

The Bill’s main purposes include to amend the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, the Children’s Services Act 1996 and the Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2021 to provide for matters relating to the Regulatory Authority as the integrated sector regulator for education and care services and children’s services in Victoria.

I wish to put these specific changes and/or amendments on record, because I think it is important, particularly as the lead speaker, that we do have that. I know the minister’s second-reading speech touches on a lot of these things and the bill is obviously available, but it is important to outline what these changes are, so I wanted to put those specific changes or amendments on record in the time that I have got available.

The main provisions of the bill also include to amend the Education and Care Services National Law set out in the schedule to the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 by the following:

to expand the meaning of a person with management or control of an education and care service; and

to clarify that a Regulatory Authority may administer tests or questions for the purposes of assessing a person’s fitness and propriety; and

to provide for suspension or cancellation of provider approval in certain circumstances where the provider approval has been cancelled or refused under the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999 of the Commonwealth; and

to remove service waivers and temporary waivers in relation to compliance with an element of the National Quality Standard; and

to change the notification process for the transfer of a service approval …

There are a couple of others that I will continue to advance:

• to clarify the requirements for display of information in relation to family day care services; and

• to make changes to the condition requiring employment or engagement of a minimum number of family day care co-ordinators; and

to extend the duration of the highest rating for an education and care service; and

to extend the requirement under the Education and Care Services National Law for child protection training to family day care co-ordinators; and

to increase the maximum penalties for various offences against the Education and Care Services National Law …

So there is quite a mouthful there in terms of main purposes, but as I said, it is important to put those specific amendments on record as we are making contributions to the bill and talking about why they may be required as part of this bill.

The main purposes of the bill also include to amend the Children’s Services Act 1996, as I mentioned:

to expand the meaning of a person with management or control of a children’s service; and

to clarify that a Regulatory Authority may administer tests or questions for the purposes of assessing a person’s fitness and propriety; and

to provide for suspension or cancellation of a provider approval in certain circumstances where the provider approval has been cancelled or refused under the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999 of the Commonwealth; and

to change the notification process for transfer of a service approval.

Another main purpose of the bill is to amend the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 to remove the redundant requirement to table the annual report of the national authority in both houses of the Victorian Parliament, which I have mentioned. Again, I will come back to that in a moment. Finally, the other main purpose of the bill is to amend the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 in relation to the provision of maternal and child health (MCH) nursing services and to provide further maternal and child health nurse regulation-making powers.

I have been through the background. But again, just to put it on record, the bill seeks to enhance that regulatory system for early childhood education in Victoria and nationally. The bill proposes various amendments to several acts, which I have outlined in detail. This follows the 2019 national quality framework review, which was aimed at ensuring that the national quality framework continues to meet its objectives, considering the ongoing effectiveness and sustainability of the national quality framework and considering the continuing evolution of the education and care sector, which we know continues to face challenges and changes and does need that regular review. Finally, as I have mentioned, a meeting of the education ministers in May this year—on 6 May 2022—endorsed that final 2019 national quality framework review.

In layman’s terms, for want of better words—rather than the technical side of all those amendments—the bill is about making a number of amendments to make child care safer for children and lift the quality of services. I think we would all agree with that. No-one would be against making child care safer for children and lifting the quality of services. Certainly we are in full support of that. The bill requires all family day care coordinators to complete child protection training prior to commencing employment. We think that is an important change, and we wholeheartedly support that. The bill provides for greater access to information about family day care providers by regulatory authorities and the department. Again, at the bill briefing, quite some time was spent on how that works—what access to information will be forthcoming and how that information will be used to improve services and to make child care safer. The regulator will also be able to assess more rigorously the fitness and propriety of service providers across the sector, and again we have no argument there. We all want that to be tested and to have the best possible people in the childcare industry.

The bill also makes some minor amendments relating to maternal and child health nursing services to require providers of MCH nursing services to employ or engage nurses only if they have a prescribed prerequisite. As I mentioned, there were a couple of questions from some of my colleagues around that. I am thankful to Enrico for providing clarification on that. We were quite satisfied with the answer that was given and need no further discussion or debate around that item.

There were a couple of areas that were raised with me that we did seek clarification about at the very thorough bill briefing. Clarification was sought about amending the national law act to remove the redundant requirement to table the annual report of the national authority in each house of the Victorian Parliament. Again, when someone reads that, immediately the alarm bells go off: what does that mean, why is it changing and how does that impact? The response stated that the annual report of the national authority is tabled at the national level in the federal Parliament, which removes the need for it to be repeated in the Victorian Parliament. So the information is still there—it is still accessible and still available—so there is no need for great concern around that. It is a straightforward and sensible change.

Many of the amendments will be made through regulations; however, several of the amendments need to be made through the act. We have gone through those changes and the amendments that need to be made through the act. The rest of course are through regulations. Yes, when you are in opposition often there are concerns raised or red flags go up when governments can exercise power through regulations, free from the scrutiny of the Parliament, but again it is par for the course for the government of the day to be able to make those changes through regulations, so we will continue to monitor and just see what sort of changes are made through regulations and of course raise any concerns with the minister or through the department should the need arise.

Finally, the national quality review changes will commence from July this year. I will not spend a lot of time—although time is on my side today—talking about Victoria’s role in this, but the changes will commence from July next year, and as such these amendments and the bill must pass this year. Furthermore, the child safe standards commence from 1 January next year and therefore the minister is time bound to get these amendments through the Parliament this term. So we are not opposing the bill. I would see that it would pass this house this week, allowing the Council, those in the other place, to debate it. Of course the minister is in the other house, so they would be able to debate it and it would meet the requirements of passing the Parliament and meeting all those date requirements. As I said, when it comes to improving services and the quality of services and childcare safety, it should have the support to be able to get through the house with minimal disruption over the next couple of weeks.

I am just looking to see if there are any other points I wish to raise in the time allotted to me. Again, by way of process, I do enjoy when we get a piece of legislation in this house and we go out and consult with a wide range of people, stakeholder groups. There are many in a lot of portfolios, and certainly the stakeholders in early childhood are many and varied. We did engage through email, phone and whatever means we could, inviting stakeholders to make comment on the bill. We received no opposition to the bill from any of the stakeholders, so again that helped us form a view on this. Certainly if we had any matters that were raised by stakeholders we would have put them forward at the bill briefing, which that process allows for.

As I said at the outset, we are not opposing the bill. The bill is about making several amendments to make child care safer for children and lifting the quality of service. The amendments have the support of the early childhood sector and stakeholders in Victoria and indeed across Australia, endorsed through the review process, so that is why I put our not-opposed position. I will leave it there. I am sure there are many people on both sides that would like to make a contribution on this bill. Of course we all have early childhood education centres and understand the importance of early childhood development in our electorates, so I am sure many will make contributions on that. I will leave my contribution there.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (16:03): It is a real pleasure to rise and speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 at a time of unprecedented development and investment in early childhood education, and it is fitting that this bill comes at around about the 10-year mark of the implementation of the national quality framework, a landmark Gillard federal Labor government reform, led by Minister Ellis at the time, that looked to standardise and improve the quality of standards across Australia for all of our youngest Australians as they embark on the most formative part of their education journey, early childhood education. That reform piece has been extraordinary for millions of young people who have benefited during that time in their early childhood education and experience. It has changed ratios, it has changed outcomes, it has lifted standards and it has made sure that our youngest Australians get the very best outcomes, because we know that an early childhood education is so critical and fundamental to the development of our young people.

We know of the amazing magic that happens in brain development in the first 1000 days of a child’s life. I have experienced that twice. I am embarking on it for the second time, with the little one now 18 months old. We know how important our early childhood education workforce is and the work that they do to support young people in our community. They are experiencing now a time of great change and revolution from a building and investment standpoint. They know that this government backs their sector and is working with them in every element of the work that they do. When we think about the Building Blocks investment that has been made to roll out universal three-year-old kinder, we are in the 2022 year of that rollout—that is, 5 hours of universal three-year-old kinder. That is an extraordinary outcome.

We know the landmark reports into early childhood development and brain development of our young people did not differentiate between three- and four-year-old kinder, but it was the Andrews Labor government that led the way and led the nation in saying that it would deliver 15 hours of three-year-old kinder. It is amazing to see the excitement from our early childhood providers across the Mordialloc electorate and indeed all parts of Victoria. I have had the chance, as Parliamentary Secretary for Schools, to jump into the early childhood education space on a few occasions, opening up buildings and facilities and meeting with educators, our teachers and communities, who have greatly benefited from this investment.

So universal three-year-old kinder is being rolled out. We then see free kinder and the great reforms this is bringing and the cost-of-living savings. $2500 per child per setting is an extraordinary contribution to help families, but it also places a significant value on encouraging all of our kids to access kinder or early childhood education, regardless of the settings. It is a really important investment and cost-of-living support measure as well. But then there is the big one—the absolute big one—30 hours of pre-prep early education, the equivalent of four-year-old kinder, is one of the proudest things that we can all share in this Parliament. It is one of the biggest reforms that we will see. By 2032 this will be rolled out across our state so kids and their families can be sure in the future that they are getting the very best education right here in Victoria.

We are the Education State all the way through, whether it is in early childhood education, in primary and secondary, in specialist and special developmental school settings or in TAFE and our tertiary settings. We have the very best institutions, the best educators and the most dedicated workforce in the nation. We need about 10 000 early childhood educators over the coming years. I know that there has been a lot of focus on choosing nursing as a profession in recent announcements, but we really want more teachers, more early childhood teachers, choosing—what a contribution to make!—to get involved in this sector and to support the next generation of Victorians coming through.

One of the very first briefings that I had as Parliamentary Secretary for Schools was about the power and impact of early childhood education. You see, you can measure whether an individual has had that really formative education early on and track it right through their life and the outcomes that they have in the future, such is the power of that 1000 days of brain development. We have a huge obligation to make sure that we set all of our kids up, regardless of circumstances, regardless of their postcode or their setting, so that they get the very best opportunities. When you know how powerful and how impactful it is on outcomes for young Victorians, you wonder why it was not done ages ago. But now we have got that investment, we have got a rollout journey, and the Andrews Labor government is delivering an absolute building, investment and workforce revolution in the early childhood setting.

This bill really adds another element to that. It is about investment, but it is also about quality and it is about safety for our kids. From that Council of Australian Governments process that I talked about that was implemented a decade ago by the Gillard federal Labor government, some of the work that was done under that review has led to some of the changes that we see in this Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill today. Some of them were covered off by the Shadow Minister for Education, who went through them. I acknowledge the bipartisan way in which that engagement has occurred as well. The work he has done in engaging the sector and community is really important as well. There have been cross-party deliberations between a range of different ministers through the Council of Australian Governments to get to this point and then we will see those reforms and changes implemented in each model jurisdiction as well.

Turning to some of those changes that we see, the two key reasons that this bill has come before the Parliament are to implement the outcomes of the five-yearly review of the national quality framework and to enable child safe standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator, the Secretary of the Department of Education and Training, to provide a clear departmental oversight, an important oversight. It builds on that ongoing work to make sure that we are at the forefront of reform and delivery of the national quality framework amendments. That will strengthen the safety of our kids in early childhood services and improve oversight and compliance tools for the regulatory authority. What could be more important than making sure, with the absolute revolution that we are seeing in building, in early childhood outcomes, in investment that has been made and in the huge expansion in staff and young Victorians being able to access those facilities and settings across Victoria now with 5 hours of universal three-year-old kinder, that the safety and compliance is absolute and that parents, guardians, carers and grandparents have the greatest assurance that that safety and support has been implemented.

The bill will also support early childhood services to comply with child safe standards so that protecting children from harm and abuse is embedded in the everyday practice of leaders, staff and volunteers. There are so many different elements and different settings that we see in early childhood education, from childcare settings—highly regulated—through to our volunteer kinder associations that might be supported by local government or volunteer boards. There is a real spectrum. It is a complex setting and industry that underpins the learning and outcomes of the youngest Victorians in our community. We need to make sure that there is always that high level of compliance, support and care and make sure that every single early childhood setting has the tools available to make sure that they are at the highest level of compliance and engagement and make sure that they are taking all the preventative steps—auditing that and making sure that our kids are always safe.

I also love the maternal and child health service reforms that are part of this bill. Maternal and child health workers are some of the greatest Victorians ever. They do an extraordinary job in our community supporting young families on their journey and in our council settings and our state settings. The maternal and child health amendments in this bill safeguard the prerequisites to become part of the maternal and child health workforce and are consistent with this Andrews Labor government’s commitment to deliver a high-quality maternal and child health service into the future.

We have experienced that as a family. One in six women will go through postnatal depression. I have talked in this setting about Lauren’s journey—my partner, Lauren—and the importance of maternal and child health workers in supporting you on your journey into the future. I just want to give them a big shout-out for the work that they do, whether it is coming to your home and giving you that comfort and care and support and saying that you are, hopefully, on the right journey or letting you know if your little one is up and about and tracking okay. They do an incredible job. Where would we be without the maternal and child health sector? We need to invest more in it, and these safeguards for the prerequisites are truly amazing.

This is another example of the Andrews Labor government delivering in early childhood education and putting the youngest Victorians at the forefront of everything we do—massive investment in the workforce, massive investment in facilities and making sure that universal kinder rolled out into the future changes the lives and outcomes of young Victorians.

Ms RYAN (Euroa) (16:13): Acting Speaker McCurdy, it is lovely to see you in the chair. I am very pleased to rise today to talk on this important piece of legislation. This bill implements recommendations from the 2019 review of the national quality framework, as others have touched on, which have of course been agreed to by states and territories through the ministerial council (MinCo) and the COAG process. That framework aims to provide a national approach to the regulation of care and of education services across Australia. The 2019 review was designed as a bit of a check-in, I suppose, to make sure that that framework was still fit for purpose and operating within the objectives of national law. Those objectives include ensuring the safety of and improving the educational and development outcomes of children enrolled in education and care services. Importantly, the national laws also aim to improve access to information about the quality of education and care services whilst also reducing the regulatory and administrative burden on services, and we see some of that in the legislation before the house at the moment.

I want to specifically touch on some of the changes that this legislation makes around family day care and the rating systems before making some more general comments about the provision of child care. The bill seeks to clarify the requirements for the display of information in relation to family day care services. I understand from reading some of the documentation around the review that that will basically mean that a family day care educator must display an assessment of their venue or residence and that an approved assessor must undertake that assessment, and that is designed to provide a level of information to families about the risks that might exist within that physical environment. Family day cares will have to put on public display that diagram so that families are more informed. I think it is a good thing to make sure that families are informed. It also extends the requirement for child protection training to family day care coordinators. Again, I think that is a good thing.

I just want, I suppose, to reflect on how important family day care is, particularly in the provision of care in regional Victoria, where often long day care services do not exist or are not available. I know that everyone’s experience of family day care is different, and I have spoken to friends who are sometimes a bit iffy about family day care. But on a very personal note, my own little one is in family day care in Seymour, and I cannot speak highly enough of the relationship our family has had with Sonya Drummond, who runs our service. I do not usually indulge in speaking about myself when it comes to debating bills, but I hope that my electorate will forgive me on this one occasion. I have always been very aware that my story is but one of 49 000 that I represent in this place, but I did want to mention Yiayia, because she has been an absolute lifesaver for our family on so many occasions—and I will try not to get emotional. The care that she provides for Sunday sometimes feels like an absolute lifeline for our family. It has given Sunday real stability, and I cannot thank her enough for what she has done for our family. She is so much more than the carer of our child. Sonya has also been my parenting mentor in lots of ways. With Sunday being my first child, she has been a real source of advice for us. Over the last couple of years I have stood in her living room, and at times I have laughed and at times I have cried. She knows more about our family and the challenges that we face—the ups and downs and the good times and the bad—than many people. I think that is the relationship that many people can have with a good—we call them ‘childcare providers’ and we call them ‘childcare services’, but often they play a much bigger role in people’s lives and in families’ lives. It is important that this does reflect why it is important to ensure that the regulation is right, but sometimes when we stand in this place as legislators and as regulators we cannot always capture those relationships that exist between families and between the people who those families entrust to look after the most important little people in their lives. I do wish everyone had a Yiayia, and I would like to thank her so very sincerely for what she has done for our family.

A further change in this bill is to extend the duration of the highest rating, the ‘excellent’ rating, for an education and care service. I do want to just reflect on that, because I can understand why the change has been recommended by MinCo, extending it from three years to five years. But I do, I suppose, want to flag that I think that this should be closely monitored. I get why you would seek to reduce the administrative burden, but at the same time a lot can change in five years—workforces change, management can change. I know in the past I have relied on those national quality standard ratings to assess a childcare service, and we really need to keep close watch on that to make sure that services that do get rated ‘excellent’ do not then fall off and families are not making decisions based on that.

I wanted to mention the Mitchell Institute report. Many in the chamber would no doubt have studied the work that they have done around the availability of child care in Australia. That study told us what we already know in regional Victoria. Child care for many families is incredibly difficult, and many are living in what is deemed a childcare desert. There are many smaller communities in my electorate—communities like Murchison, Rushworth, Tooborac and Redesdale—that have no child care at all, and many of our larger towns do not have enough services or places to cater for the number of children who live there. So a family in Kilmore who wants to access child care will have between two and six children vying for that place, depending on where they live. It is a very similar story in Broadford, and that has a domino effect on the rest of the community. So, for example, in Murchison, because there is no child care, parents have to take their children to Shepparton, and that means their own employment options are limited. But it also means that their children then seek to go to school in Shepparton and they seek to play sport in Shepparton, and that strips a community like Murchison of the young people who might otherwise engage in their own community.

I think no discussion is complete about the availability of child care in regional Victoria without considering how that data from the Australian Early Development Census and the availability of child care impacts on the vulnerability of children and their emotional, physical and social wellbeing. That picture is quite stark when you look at the results from the AEDC. Communities in regional Victoria are consistently among the most disadvantaged in the state. Benalla, for example, has a high percentage of children vulnerable on all indicators when compared with the state average. Seymour has double the state average of kids deemed developmentally vulnerable in social, emotional and language measures, and the further you get from Melbourne, the worse the results.

During my time I have advocated for more funding for Tomorrow Today, which is an amazing philanthropic organisation in Benalla. I have been very proud to work with the organisation to secure an additional three years of funding, but the organisation will again be scrambling for funds come 2023. I want to see a commitment to continued support for them. Their goal is to ensure that all kids in Benalla are ready to learn when they attend school—and the work they do is amazing. I think with my time here due to come to an end I would like to encourage both sides to seriously look at that program and that early intervention model to help close the gap between rural and regional students.

In concluding I just want to make a few comments about the availability of child care in this place, and I hope the house will indulge me. I know I am somewhat straying from the subject of the bill, but I do think it is vitally important that the Victorian Parliament seeks to modernise itself and seeks to follow the lead of the commonwealth Parliament in providing child care here on site. I know I am not the first person in this place who has faced such challenges—and my good friend the member for Lowan is here; she has similarly. But of course the member for Bendigo East in this place also has children and is a woman living in regional Victoria. I would like to think that the Parliament would do more to recognise the unique challenges of this workplace for others who are seeking to represent their communities. I think more can be done for MPs with little kids who have to leave their home in order to travel to Parliament. I have to say I have been surprised by the institutional resistance that I have felt when I have raised these issues. Deputy Speaker, I would, with the consent of the minister at the table, request a brief extension of time.

Leave granted.

Ms RYAN: Thank you to the Leader of the House. I do not deny the fact that we as MPs are well remunerated, but there are few people who can hold a full-time place in child care in their own community and also hold one in Melbourne for the 14 weeks of the year that Parliament sits. At various times it has been suggested to me that I get a nanny. Even if that were possible, it is very difficult to find someone who is willing to look after your child in your own community and also travel to Melbourne away from their home and family whilst Parliament is sitting or indeed to find someone who is willing to do it in Melbourne on an ad hoc basis. I have also been told that there is a challenge because there is not enough demand from within the Parliament for such a service, but I do not think that is a legitimate reason when there are indeed public servants in this precinct who I think would also seek to access such a service. That service does not need to be based here on site; it could be based within the precinct.

There have been sitting weeks where I have commuted 2 hours home, when Parliament has adjourned at 7.30 at night, to be able to see my child, despite the fact that she is well and truly asleep and in bed by then, and then I have left at 5.00 am to get back to be here ready to work and to do my job. My husband has done the reverse commute—and he will do that again this sitting week—where in order for us to be together as a family he has left Melbourne at 6.00 am on a sitting day, dropped our child in Seymour, gone home, worked the day, left, picked her up in Seymour and come back to Melbourne so that I could see her in the evening. That is pretty rough on a little kid, having to constantly shift between places. But my point is that it is not sustainable, and it should not be necessary in a modern workplace.

If the Parliament generally wants to reflect the diversity of the Victorian community, it needs to recognise this challenge and actually provide more support and more access to child care for MPs during sitting weeks. I have been loath to raise this for myself because I do not like raising it for me, but I am conscious that there are now women who are seeking to come into this place, and it is important for them that it changes. We have women on the government side who are contesting regional seats like Lara and Ripon and women like my successor—hopefully, if she is given the honour of being elected—who have young children. For those women—and it is not just women, it is men as well—and those MPs with young children, it needs to change if we want this place to be sustainable. With those comments, and in thanking the Leader of the House and the Minister for Multicultural Affairs at the table for their indulgence and their kindness in allowing me to go well past my time, I would like to commend the bill to the house.

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (16:26): I too would like to speak in support of the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which introduces stronger regulations for early childhood services and safeguards for the quality of maternal and child health services. I will be focusing on our stronger regulations for early childhood services during this debate and the importance of this bill passing in 2022.

I thank the member for Mordialloc for his contribution to this debate and for the work that he does as Parliamentary Secretary for Schools and Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Social Inclusion. Like me, the member for Mordialloc is a proud parent of two daughters and wants the best opportunities for his children and every child in Victoria. I would really like to thank the member for Euroa for sharing her experiences with us. Thank you. You will be missed in this place, and that was just beautiful, that advocacy at the end, so well done to you. It was a really, really great contribution. You will be missed—I am sorry, Chair, not to go through you—and I wish you and all the family all the best for the next chapter.

This bill is about ensuring that Victoria continues to be a nation leader in providing children with quality early childhood education that really does set them up for life. I wish to thank the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep in the other place for her commitment and advocacy for the early childhood portfolio. I wish to particularly thank Harriet Leadbeater and the advisers in the minister’s office as well as the department for the work that they have done to bring this bill to the house. Your work is appreciated, so thank you so much. I wish to commend the minister on the landmark work she is doing in leading our transformative early education program.

Anyone who has sent kids to kinder knows that kinders are not just places where our children learn, where they create and where they innovate and play; they are a vital part of our community. Kinders provide important bonds and create social cohesion and inclusion for parents, children and carers. I know that some of my best friends are mums I met through the kinder drop-offs and the kinder pick-ups and when we cut so much fruit together as volunteers at our local kinder. Importantly, I always love when I am out and about in Ballarat catching up with my daughters’ kinder teachers, including Heather, Cate and Mary. They are wonderful early educators who inspired my girls to be curious, to be compassionate and to be caring.

The role our kinders play in our state is crucial, and that is why it is so important that we invest in the educators, the programs and the infrastructure to support them. Since 2015 kindergarten services in my LGA, the City of Ballarat, have received more than $10 million in state government funding to support 40 infrastructure projects and 92 IT or inclusive education equipment projects—really, really significant investments by this government in early education. Our government is proudly embarking on the largest early childhood investments in this state’s history to give every Victorian child the very best start in life. Our Best Start, Best Life program is a game changer for families and for the whole community. The changes that we are introducing to early childhood education will be transformative in both the short and long term for our children, their parents and our state.

The Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 before the house will ensure that we deliver quality, safe and accessible early childhood education for every Victorian child, and it is another example of our commitment to building on our track record. By amending the laws that regulate the quality and safety of early childhood services, this bill will ensure that oversight and compliance tools for early childhood regulators are as robust as possible. This is a bill that I am really proud of, because every parent—I certainly did and my husband certainly did—expects their children to be safe at kinder, to be provided with high-quality care and education and to be looked after. You do not want to be worrying while you are at work or while you are raising your other children about whether your kids are safe at kinder. You want to know that robust checks and balances are there.

It is very important that we pass this bill this year because Victoria needs to be able to ensure that this is passed in 2022 to enable the implementation of the outcomes of the five-year national quality framework review in mid-2023. All state and territory education ministers around the country have agreed that the regulatory changes recommended by the national quality framework review should commence from 1 July 2023, and this is also the strong expectation of the stakeholders in the childhood sector. The national quality framework operates as an applied national law scheme. The national law is enacted by Victoria as the host jurisdiction and is applied in other jurisdictions as their own law or, in Western Australia, through corresponding legislation. The passage of this bill this year is also critical to ensure the integrated sector regulator provisions for the child safe standards can commence on 1 January 2023 along with the rest of the new enforcement regimes for the child safe standards. I think everyone in this house is in agreement that making sure children are safe is our number one priority and so important, and passing this legislation is important. Significantly, this bill further complements the Andrews Labor government’s life-changing reforms to early childhood, giving our youngest Victorians the very best start and the best opportunities in life.

Early education is an issue that is important to many families across my electorate of Wendouree, and the rollout of the Andrews Labor government’s landmark reforms is most welcome. Childcare fees are crippling family budgets and holding parents back—mainly mums—from returning to work. I know from firsthand experience how tough childcare fees are on hardworking families. When I was teaching part-time—I was a secondary teacher—we had a school timetable across a fortnight, so there would be some weeks that I did not teach on a Tuesday at all but the following Tuesday I taught all day, and I had to have the kids in child care on both Tuesdays. At one stage I did the maths: I was earning $1.71 an hour after I had paid childcare fees. So we need to change this, and we are changing this, because we know the profound impact that it is having. That is why we are making kinder free for three- and four-year-olds, saving families across Ballarat and the whole of Victoria up to $2500 per year. In doing so we are delivering relief to household budgets. I know that when you are juggling on part-time wages with these high fees it is really, really challenging.

On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity of having a street stall at the Ballarat Baby & Children’s Market at the Doug Dean Stadium in Delacombe and had so many terrific conversations with lots of new parents and grandparents about our exciting investments in early education. It was wonderful to speak to so many parents with newborns and share the excellent news that from 2025 we will transition from four-year-old kinder to pre-prep with 30 hours of learning, creating a high-quality, universal program to give four-year-old kids the opportunity to learn through play. I strongly believe that by investing in early childhood education we are ensuring the next generation will have a bright future and our state will benefit significantly. Whether it is through the building of new bricks and mortar infrastructure or free TAFE courses to train early childhood educators, the Andrews Labor government is supporting our littlest learners to get the best start in life. We are also creating more three-year-old and four-year-old kindergarten places across Victoria, including in my electorate of Ballarat. In June this year I was delighted to announce $2.25 million for the Building Blocks capacity-building stream grant for the City of Ballarat to create three kinder rooms at a brand new Alfredton Ballymanus community hub. It is a part of my electorate that I know very well, having grown up just less than a kilometre away, and it is only a short distance from where I attended Alfredton kinder with Mrs Lucas and Miss Helen. I have such happy memories of my kinder days being filled with interactive play, singing, painting, games and so many stories.

The Building Blocks capacity-building stream grant for the Alfredton Ballymanus kinder was one of six grants announced across Victoria, sharing in almost $10 million. The investment will allow more kids to attend kinder and ensure that they get the best start possible. What we are going to do in Ballymanus is construct three new kinder rooms, each with the capacity for 33 children undertaking three- or four-year-old kinder programs. But what is really important is that means 198 children will be able to access three- or four-year-old kindergarten programs during the week. This is so significant and is wonderful news for the families with babies and young children living in Alfredton and the adjacent growth suburbs of Winter Valley and Lucas. I know this because the young families are telling me how pleased they are that they will be able to walk their little ones to kinder and their children will go on to make friends with kids in the neighbourhood. This is a really, really important part of our program. I am so proud to be a part of this government, and I commend the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 to the house.

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (16:36): It is a pleasure to rise and make some comments on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. As our lead speaker, the member for Croydon, has already alluded to, we are not opposing this bill. There are some very important things in this bill that we absolutely, as many speakers have said today, need to be supporting. Quality child care is something that we should all be aspiring to—safe child care and doing the very best for our kids, our families and women. That is a lot of what this bill is all about. Child care is all about giving families choice—giving women the choice to return back to work and giving children the best start in life. We have heard some fantastic contributions today. I want to particularly thank the member for Euroa for the heartfelt comments that she made to the chamber, in amongst it talking about providing child care in the workplace, including this workplace. We should be doing whatever we can to provide accessible, affordable child care in the workplace, and I certainly support the comments that she made today in the chamber.

One of the things that we have spoken a lot about is cost, which is a huge thing. I know that both the government and the opposition have come out and have said they will provide free child care for three- and four-year-olds, which is great—really, really good. The other end of the spectrum is accessibility. There is no question, whatever report you look at, whatever report you read, that there is a real issue in terms of a shortage of child care. As the member for Euroa mentioned in her contribution, the Mitchell report, which was done in March 2022 by Victoria University, titled Deserts and Oases: How Accessible is Childcare in Australia?, talked about how more than 9 million Australians live in areas where there are insufficient childcare places for families, according to the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken into child care availability in Australia. The report found that 28 per cent of metropolitan and 52 per cent of regional Australians live in areas considered childcare deserts, with no availability of child care whatsoever, and 1 million Australians have no access whatsoever to child care. So accessibility is key, and the further out you go, the harder it becomes. The flip side of that in areas like mine is where there is a real need for child care there have been a lot of private providers popping up, which is great, but then the cost in many instances becomes quite prohibitive as well, so it is getting that balance right.

One of the things that the member for Brighton and I worked very well together on was supporting a number of not-for-profit childcare centres in the City of Port Phillip that were earmarked for closure by the City of Port Phillip. There was a huge uprising by the local community, and I commend those members that stood up to fight to have those childcare centres saved. There were 120 children at these three childcare centres: Eildon Road Childcare and Kindergarten, Elwood Children’s Centre and the Avenue Children’s Centre and Kindergarten. These three centres were ones which we fought with the parents to save. Over 3000 people signed the petition to have them saved, and I am pleased to say that the council have halted the closure of those for the moment and have made a commitment of $5 million to have those childcare centres upgraded so they can be fit for purpose and saved going forward.

This is an important example, an area like Port Phillip and Glen Eira, where it is implied that there is demand. There are a lot of private centres available, so you would think there would not be a problem. There is a problem in terms of the waiting list in these areas, both in the for-profit and the not-for-profit, and we just cannot afford to have more closures. That is why it was one of the campaigns that I was very pleased to join the member for Brighton on, to ensure that those childcare centres were saved.

Interestingly, when I was looking at this today I came across something which I had read some years ago and just refreshed my memory on Albert Einstein as a child. Few people would ever have anticipated where Albert Einstein ended up, particularly with his language and developmental issues as a child. His sister once confessed that Einstein had such difficulty with language that those around him feared that he would never, ever learn. When he was not well, at the age of five and bedridden, his father gave him a compass; that was kind of considered the move into science. His mother, who was a talented pianist, gave him a violin, which obviously also sparked that learning as well. It is interesting the importance of that early learning and what that does and how that sets you up. Not everybody is going to be an Einstein but everybody should have that ability to learn and have the best service that we possibly can provide. It is a great reminder of just how important the provision of early child care, early learning and education is.

It has always been for me the leveller—no matter who you are, no matter where you come from—having the availability of an education as early as possible and being able to give people a level playing field. I know this is not necessarily directly related to child care, but one of the things that certainly got me involved in politics and community was working with the Ardoch Youth Foundation. A young girl was coming to school out of a Brotherhood bin at the age of about 12. She knew then the only way to change her life was to actually get an education. She had everything going against her—her family, her financial inability and no support—and it was education that changed her life.

So I say child care at the very earliest level is just so important: accessibility, availability, cost—the best possible child care, which this bill talks about—safety and quality. We have seen time and time again, unfortunately, situations where we have not necessarily had the best care and we have had people in the past that have not necessarily been trained the way they could have been. I know absolutely when someone has dropped their kid off at a childcare centre they are off doing their thing, but they want peace of mind to know that their child is going to be safe. That has got to be absolutely paramount. As I say, accessibility, availability and the best possible care—that is what we are striving towards, what we all should be striving towards, and that is why I think it is really important to do whatever we can in this chamber to support changes to ensure quality is not compromised in any possible way and that we are giving our children the best start in life.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (16:45): I rise today to contribute on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Before I commence my contribution I would just like to acknowledge the contribution of the member for Euroa and the important points that she raised with the extension of time that she had, in particular in regard to this place and the childcare arrangements—or lack of—here for parents, and younger parents at that, to try and encourage people to come into politics. I really do acknowledge that contribution by her.

What a fantastic policy and legislation the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep and this Andrews Labor government have delivered for Victoria. The delivery of services and the exceptional paradigm shifts this government has made to prepare our children for school and lifelong education are transformational. This policy has been a game changer for families in my electorate of Melton, and just last week I was delighted to have the Premier himself come out to the Melton electorate to visit Bridge Road Children’s and Community Centre. This centre is a multipurpose facility with a large space for community and commercial activities. The venue also has a range of early childhood services, such as a kindergarten, maternal and child health and occasional care, and the excellent work of the Kirrip Aboriginal Corporation in delivering their Aboriginal playgroup also takes advantage of this excellent facility now as the group has expanded. The Treasurer and I heard about this amazing work when we visited Kirrip Aboriginal Corporation only a couple of weeks ago. The delivery of early childhood education in Melton by this Andrews Labor government has been well received. It was just great for the many families to meet with the Premier last Wednesday and to hear exactly how this government is delivering for them, for the Melton electorate and for all Victorians. Bridge Road Children’s and Community Centre is another example of this investment as the community of Strathtulloh and Cobblebank enjoy the benefits of this government’s investment in education. I want to give a shout-out to the supervisor at Bridge Road community centre and child care, Debbie Muir, and her wonderful team of educators for their dedication to our young ones starting out in their education journey. On that particular day last week when we were out there, they were amazing with the young kids within the centre.

The early learning education for these families may begin here, but they will soon transition to the new Strathtulloh Primary School, which we opened earlier this year. Later they will be able to attend the new secondary school in Cobblebank, which the Treasurer allocated funding to purchase the land for in this year’s state budget. Later on they may be able to choose to study in tertiary education centres that will likely be co-located with the building of the new Melton hospital—possibly even for free—as this government’s excellent investment in our nurses and midwives continues. If I had my way, they could enjoy the Andrews Labor government’s free TAFE courses, which I would love to see at a new TAFE facility for Melton, although I have a few more arms to twist with that one. I will keep twisting them as much as I can.

The early learning centres attached to the new schools that this government is delivering are a game changer for families too as they avoid the dreaded double drop-off. We have seen that in local schools in particular—the new school at Eynesbury that was opened last year and the new school at Strathtulloh that was opened this year. It certainly makes it much easier for parents to manage their children both at the early ages and then at school age. And of course families in Thornhill Park, which is coming into my electorate with the redistribution, will soon have these benefits too as we get on with delivering the new primary school and early learning centre there, ready to open up for the next school year. The families at Arnolds Creek have the benefit of this government’s investment too. This is such an important change for our communities as not only is it saving them time, it is also reducing local traffic on roads that are already under pressure. The new schools and early childhood education centres mean less traffic in already established areas like Exford Road in Melton South. I am sure there are also environmental and safety benefits as many families reduce unnecessary trips.

This government, the Andrews Labor government, is proudly embarking on the largest early childhood investment in this state’s history to give every Victorian child the best start in life. As part of this government’s landmark reform agenda, we will be making kindergarten programs free from 2023, which will increase access to quality childhood education and give Victorian families more choice, more flexibility and certainly more money saved. Again, with that flexibility it will mean that parents will be able to access working hours more in regard to these free kindergarten programs. We will establish 50 government-operated childcare centres over the decade, of course ensuring that early childhood education is available in areas with the greatest unmet demand and providing convenient access for working parents, and that is the whole idea: allowing parents to have some freedom to be able to manage their working hours. We will also transition four-year-old kindergarten to pre-prep, with 30 hours of learning by 2032, creating a high-quality universal program to give four-year-old kids the opportunity to learn through play. This is all in addition to our ongoing nation-leading rollout of 15 hours of three-year-old kindergarten for Victorian children by 2029. Of course these transformational reforms speak for themselves. This government is absolutely committed to delivering quality, safe and accessible early childhood education to every Victorian child.

This bill is yet another example of that commitment, building on our track record. By amending the laws that regulate the quality and safety of early childhood services, this bill will ensure that oversight and compliance tools for early childhood regulators are as robust as possible. There are two main reasons for the amendments in this bill: to implement the outcomes of the five-yearly review of the national quality framework and also to enable the child safe standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator, the Secretary of the Department of Education and Training. The national quality framework amendments will strengthen the safety of children and early childhood services and improve oversight and compliance tools for the regulatory authority, and the amendments are likely to lead to improvements in educator practices, qualifications and understandings, and certainly improvements in families’ understanding and awareness of service quality, safe practices and risk mitigation.

The bill also supports early childhood services to comply with child safe standards so that protecting children from harm and abuse is embedded in the everyday practice of leaders, staff and volunteers. The government consulted with the early childhood secretary in late 2021, and they expressed a strong desire to have integrated regulation of the child safe standards so it would minimise confusion, duplication and uncertainty for their services. The bill also contains amendments to the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 relating to the maternal and child health nursing services, and the Victorian maternal and child health service providers provide comprehensive and high-quality nursing care to Victorian families in the important early years.

The Andrews Labor government is committed to protecting the prerequisites for maternal and child health nurses to maintain the high standard of universal primary health services for all Victorian children and their families from birth to school age. The maternal and child health amendments in this bill safeguard the prerequisites to become part of the maternal and child health workforce and are consistent with the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to delivering a high-quality maternal and child health service into the future. Victoria needs to ensure that this bill is passed in 2022 to enable an implementation of the outcomes of the five-year national quality framework review in mid-2023.

As my time elapses, I would also like to mention the huge benefit that early childhood education has within the childcare area. Today as the federal government prepares for the federal jobs summit, we see the importance of child care to empower women to re-enter the workforce and to continue their careers, but they still lack the support of free or low-cost child care. If the high cost of child care continues, there is little incentive for many to enter the workforce and especially cover some of the gaps that employers are facing right now. Education and child care is important to develop equality and pay equity, and the choice of both women and men to be carers of their family as well as have the opportunity for work and career needs to be on the same level.

We need to develop flexibility in our workplaces, but it is undeniable that early education and child care is critical in developing our children whilst also allowing flexibility back into the workforce. I just want to finish by thanking all those childcare workers and educators that are in the system now, with the pressures that have occurred over the last 2½ years. I thank them so much. They continue to do great work. I commend this bill to the house.

Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern) (16:55): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I acknowledge the contributions of all previous speakers and particularly my friend the member for Euroa, who I think gave a very passionate contribution and gave some very important food for thought about this workplace. My two kids are both teenagers now and well able to look after themselves, but when I was first elected to this place 16 years ago they were very young. I am married to a professional woman, and there is no doubt that my wife had to do a lot more of the heavy lifting when it came to looking after our young kids than I was able to—and partly because the facilities just did not exist here. I do think the member for Euroa in what was certainly not a valedictory but was getting close to that has put a very important item on the table for us to consider as a Parliament going forward. Nobody should be prevented or even discouraged from standing for election to this place because of the barrier of not being able to look after their kids.

This is a bill which is receiving bipartisan support because it is an acknowledgement that kindergarten is so important, and there is bipartisan support for the expansion of access to both three-year-old and four-year-old kinder in this state. But for kinders to be accessible they have to be open, and that is why I would like to direct my contribution to what is happening in my electorate, because there is a kindergarten, the Serrell Street kindergarten, in East Malvern which is a couple of good torpedo punts from my electorate office and one that I know very, very well. This is a kindergarten which has been operating for I think over 50 years now, and on 9 August the parents at this kindergarten received an email out of the blue advising that the kindergarten would be closing later this year, on 20 December. Uniting (Victoria and Tasmania) Limited is the company that operates this. It is an arm of the Uniting Church but separate from the church itself, which owns the property.

Despite the email from Uniting talking about consultation, I am advised by parents that there was absolutely zero consultation from Uniting over the so-called ‘18-month consulting/planning period’. In fact as late as May this year the parents were offered places and increased hours for next year, not knowing what was happening in the background. As a consequence a lot of local families in my electorate are desperately worried. They know how important kindergarten is for three-year-olds and four-year-olds, and the idea that their local kinder will be closing down is something which is causing a great deal of angst amongst my families.

Uniting seem to think that there is a surplus of other available opportunities in the area, and I can tell them that there are not. Sunnyside kinder in Cooinda Place has got waiting lists; Ewing kinder up the road, where my kids went, has got waiting lists. There just is not the availability for the families to get three-year-old and four-year-old kinder if Serrell Street closes down. I did write to the person concerned—I will not name her out of fairness—advising that this is causing a lot of distress amongst local families and seeking a meeting. I still have not had the courtesy of a response, which I think speaks volumes about the high-handed way in which Uniting Vic.Tas has been treating the families of my community. I have had a number of parents in my office, because I can tell you something about my community—they will stand up for their kids, and they are not going to take a backwards step. We have got some very hardworking, motivated and committed families in this electorate who are determined to see Serrell Street stay open.

As I mentioned earlier in my contribution, the land itself is not owned by Uniting Vic.Tas; it is owned by the local Uniting Church. The local Uniting Church is very pleased and happy to see a kindergarten continue on this site, and I commend the local Uniting Church for taking that very responsible viewpoint. I think some parents were initially concerned that the closure may be a precursor to flogging off the land, but I am sure that is not the case and that the land, which is owned by the church, is still going to be available for a kindergarten.

So what do we need to happen next? I have met with a number of parents, and can I say I was super impressed by how motivated these parents are. I will mention some of the ladies I have met with: Maria Hannan, Rachelle McCutcheon, Helen Franzi and Alex Hepburn; and Alexis Harrison and Emma Yeo, who are the co-presidents of the Serrell Street parents advisory committee. I wrote to the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister Stitt, on 10 August seeking an urgent meeting with the families to help us work our way through this. The parents believe there is a wonderful opportunity for a parent-run, community-run kindergarten to take the place of the one that has been abandoned by Uniting. I wrote on the 10th, I received a letter 12 days later. I was a little bit disappointed that it took 12 days on what is an urgent matter when time is of the essence. The minister said:

In the first instance, I have requested the Department to continue to work with the approved provider to get a better understanding of the issue and to support families with their options for kindergarten in 2023.

Well, Minister, the approved provider is walking away. The approved provider has abandoned my community and my families. Do not talk to the approved provider; talk to the parents. They are the ones who are going to move heaven and earth to make sure there is a great future for a kindergarten at Serrell Street. And these are smart, motivated people. They have done their homework. They have dotted their i’s; they have crossed their t’s. What they need, Minister, is a government that is prepared to care, a government that is prepared to work with these parents, guide them through the red tape and guide them through the accreditation process. But we have to do it quickly, because if the parents of the community are not convinced that there is a future for Serrell Street next year, they will go elsewhere and then there will not be the critical mass of enrolments that we need to ensure that the Serrell Street kindergarten can continue as a going concern.

I will say this in writing again to the minister, but when this bill was on the government business program for this week I thought, ‘It’s just too good an opportunity, it’s too timely for me not to take this opportunity to plead with the minister: you can be a hero in my community if you work with these families, guide them through the bureaucracy, guide them through the red tape’. They are committed, they are smart and they will do what it takes to make sure that this kindergarten can continue in 2023 and beyond. That is my plea, Minister, to you.

The minister was on, I think, Virginia Trioli’s ABC radio program last week. She was asked about Serrell Street kindergarten in East Malvern, as she was about one in the member for Niddrie’s electorate. The minister sounded very positive, saying, ‘Well, yes, we’re helping the families’. What I would say, Minister, is that so far you have not been helping the families. The opportunity is there. This is not about politics. I just want these families looked after. I want these kids to have a kindergarten in the future where there has been one for 50 years. The community needs it. We have got waiting lists everywhere else.

Kindergarten is not just about the content of what you get taught in a kindergarten, it is about building community. And to build community it has got to be local. There is no point bussing kids across town or into different municipalities to go to their kindergarten. They need to go to kindergarten locally because that cohort is where those kids will be going to school, it is where they will be playing netball and basketball and footy and cricket and everything else. We have got to keep our local kindergartens. We cannot afford to lose Serrell Street. The minister said positive things on radio, but we have not seen that backed up with action. So, Minister, as I said, you have an opportunity to be a hero in Malvern East. And I will be the first person to praise you, Minister Stitt; I will be the first person to pat you on the back and say, ‘Great job. Well done’. I do not care who gets the praise, I just want the outcome—and the outcome I want is a future for Serrell Street kindergarten. It is too important to the families; it is too important to the kids. I acknowledge this government has done some good things when it comes to expanding access to three-year-old and four-year-old kindergarten, but unless the kinders stay open, unless they stay local and unless they stay accessible—you can have all the hours you want, but we have to have open doors at kinders if we are going to make this work for Victorian kids.

Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (17:05): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, and of course this represents the best of us. If it ever was in doubt that we are absolutely the Education State—and it never would be—then you would only need to look at the reform agenda that we have had not just since I have been in this Parliament but since the Andrews Labor government first took office to see so many examples of that, and we have another one today. So I am incredibly proud to be part of a government that is willing and capable of putting forward landmark reform such as what we have got in front of us today.

I am pleased that the member for Malvern said that he would be the first to congratulate the minister as it relates to the issues that have been canvassed.

Mr M O’Brien: If she gets the results.

Ms RICHARDS: Well, I will be one of many who is going to say how pleased I am to see the reform and action that is taking place across so many areas of interest, but I will pay credit as well to the department and the minister’s office for the extraordinary work that has gone into making sure that we are leading the country—and that is what this legislation absolutely does. It demonstrates that we are leading the country.

This bill responds to the recommendations of the 2019 national quality framework review, and it makes relevant changes to the Children’s Services Act 1996 and amends the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 to remove the requirement to doubly table the annual report of the national authority. I know that was canvassed previously, including by the member for Croydon. I caught his contribution as he spoke about that as well. It is incredibly important that the Victorian regulatory authority under the national law and the Children’s Services Act be the integrated sector regulator of the new child safe standards for the early childhood sector.

Stakeholders in the early childhood education and maternal and child health sectors have had strong expectations that the national quality framework would be implemented as soon as possible, and that is reflected in the implementation agenda behind this bill. People used to call early childhood child care, and I think the evolution of that has been a really important evolution, where we do not talk about children being cared for anymore, we talk about them as being in early education settings and early educators as the people who have that responsibility.

The science is really clear. It has been clear for a long time, and this government is demonstrating once again its commitment. The science shows that the investment we make in our youngest Victorians is an investment that has extraordinary dividends, multiplying dividends, through a lifetime. There is nothing, in my view, as heartbreaking as having families not being able to afford the best start in life for their children, whether it is in the healthcare area or in education—the two priorities obviously of a Labor government and of all Labor governments, I would say. To have the opportunity to be able to send your children to a high-quality early education setting where they are safe and well looked after but also where they have the stimulation that we all want for our children is part of what we are looking at with this extraordinary reform agenda and part of what is considered before us today. I am pleased that those opposite are not opposing it.

In the real world this translates to high-quality services that make sure that our maternal and child health nurses as well have the quality and sustainability to be able to respond to families across Victoria. Of course Cranbourne is known as one of the fastest growing areas in the state, and I certainly wake up to the sound of children up and down the street. My children are much older now, but I did start my perhaps political interest as somebody on a committee of management when my oldest daughter was three years old. I started becoming involved in the local kinder on the committee of management and was in awe of our educators and the role that they played in getting my kids and all the children in the community the best start in life. It is also a place where people do come together and spend time with each other, actually, shoulder to shoulder, so having child safe standards embedded into law that protect children from harm is central in the everyday operation of not just early childhood educators and leaders but staff and volunteers as well across these maternal and child health services.

The safety of children in early childhood services is vitally important, and this bill makes sure that there are no gaps in the quality of these services. Passing this bill will enable the implementation of the outcomes of the five-year national quality framework review in mid-2023, and these regular reviews ensure the regulatory systems supported by the governments in Australia are current and continue to drive quality improvement. I will just point out again that in this state we are taking a coordination role in this. That leadership that we have seen in so many ways is demonstrated in the collaboration and cooperation across states, and in fact I saw the demonstration of some extraordinary collaboration and cooperation across states today. In fact I might have caught some great endorsement of the approach that is being taken in Victoria by the Premier of another state, so that collaboration and cooperation is really important, as is the leadership that the Victorian government is taking in so many ways.

Cranbourne has some of the most extraordinary early childhood educators and services, and our families deserve it—they absolutely deserve the best start. I do want to mention Jackie, a family day carer who has a special place in my heart for the approach that she took to early childhood education and the way that she put not just her heart and her soul but her background as somebody who speaks many, many languages at the centre of the way that she approached the profession.

I do want to also acknowledge some of the new and well-loved centres in Cranbourne. The Botanic Ridge early childhood education centre is located at the Botanic Ridge Primary School and does of course eliminate that double drop-off. And it is not just a drama; this is a social equity issue. I know from many of our discussions around gender responsive budgeting and the ways that we can change the way services operate, eliminating a double drop-off is part of that. So the way that the Botanic Ridge early childhood centre has eliminated that has made a huge difference.

I would also like to pay credit to Carlisle Park family and children’s centre and Clyde Creek as well, which I have been able to visit recently and spend time in with our educators, and Arbourlea as well and Little Stars and of course Aspire. These are extraordinary services, and the aspiration of the educators for their children reflects perfectly and mirrors perfectly the aspiration that so many in my community have for their own families and is the reason that in some contexts—many contexts in fact—they have made really dramatic decisions to move to Cranbourne, sometimes from other parts of Victoria, often from other parts of Australia and many from other countries, to get that best start for their children.

We have a new school opening in the Quarters estate—the Quarters Primary School—and that is also going to have an early parenting centre. We also have an early parenting centre on Matterhorn Drive in Clyde North, which is really important to the member for Bass, being located in the member for Bass’s electorate and serving so many of our community. It is going to make such a difference. And we are upgrading Marnebek School. It is a massive upgrade. It is part of our upgrades to every special school in Victoria and again a commitment to early childhood and the importance of making sure that these services are available for all Victorians and certainly the many people who are in Cranbourne.

A small change can make a huge difference in our community. Legislation like this makes a huge difference to the lives of our youngest Victorians. It makes the hearts of so many families sing. I can say I can go for weeks and weeks and weeks before somebody says something other than that education is a priority for them when it comes to their children. The future is bright. There is so much going on in Cranbourne. There is so much going on in the state of Victoria. There is a lot of hi-vis. There are a lot of early childhood educators. The focus on our youngest Victorians, the focus on our early childhood settings, is a credit to us. It is a credit to the minister, the work that is being done, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (17:15): I rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I do so with mixed feelings about it, because this is about making child care better, which is what we all want, but at the same time—and members have been raising issues with the current early childhood sector—it is causing a lot of angst for parents. I think everybody in this place would certainly agree that making early childhood experiences and education better is something that is paramount, and I will talk a little bit more as we go on.

This bill, I note, amends a number of acts: the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, the Children’s Services Act 1996 and the Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2021. It amends the Education and Care Services National Law set out in the schedule to the Education and Care Services National Law Act.

Everyone is committed to quality early childhood education and care, and there are pretty obvious reasons why we would do this. We know that if kids have a great start in life, it sets them up well. It sets them up in so many areas—their health and education. It teaches them to deal with other kids. It teaches them to deal with adults, because they have got the teachers and they have got other parents who might come in. It teaches them to learn rules and understand how to operate in that social environment. It is particularly important. For many it is the introduction to reading, counting and things like that, which we know are so important. We also know that quality care includes safety and making sure that our kindergartens and early childcare centres are safe places from predators—stopping people who should not be there from getting in the front gate—and secure, stopping kids from getting out. We have had a few too many instances lately of where children have managed to sneak through the gates and have caused all sorts of angst for everybody, and we need to make sure that things like that just do not happen.

This bill is really about creating the right environment for kids to thrive and having the right regulatory systems in place, and we are not opposing the bill for those reasons. Interestingly, we have the national law—the Education and Care Services National Law, which is always referred to as the national law—and we have got the national quality framework, which is interrelated here. There was a review of the quality framework in 2019. Finally—and I expect that it was the matter of COVID that may have got in the way—on 6 May this year the education ministers met and endorsed the final review package. It recommended changes to the quality framework and included drafting instructions giving effect to amendments to the national law from those recommendations, as had been agreed. Because it is the national law, it requires a host state to initiate these changes, and that is Victoria in this instance. Once it gets embedded here, then it is typically rolled out in other states. Western Australia has a bit of a different system.

I am going to touch just briefly on family day care because the bill makes a number of changes in this area. Children are looked after in family day care. It is a smaller, intimate setting in a home or other approved premises. There are obviously loads of rules and regulations. If you have a look at the website, there are so many pages of policies about indoor and outdoor requirements, staffing arrangements, child protection, medical conditions, visitors to the premises and interactions with children. But also, importantly, family day care educators must not educate and care for more than seven children at a family day care residence or approved day care venue at any one time. For many people, certainly in remoter areas, this is often the only option because it is very difficult to get day care or kindergartens up and running. Some of the changes that are here enable improved access for the regulatory authorities to family day care. Residents leave all the information on the service register. It enables risk-based, proactive approaches to regulation and helps assist in the identification of the day care educators during emergency situations—and things do happen. In my area bushfires are emergency situations. We have major storms and floods that happen. You can have other factors—external factors—of parents and different things that put a lot of stress on those educators, so being able to assist them in those situations is good. It also requires that all family day care coordinators complete child protection training prior to commencing employment—that is pretty good too—and that there be a more rigorous assessment of the fitness and propriety of the services across the state.

Everybody wants the best for their children, and I think everybody here wants the best for the future generations. Rarely do I hear a complaint from the early childcare sector about the education component, about what they are getting or about the level of care. I hear a lot of complaints, though, as have others who have already mentioned them, about the workforce, about the governance and about the stresses that are being put on them as it changes to increasing hours. Everyone agrees with increasing hours for three-year-olds to 15 hours and for pre-preps to 30 hours of play-based care over the next decade. My daughter did a pre-prep program, and it was absolutely fantastic. She got a lot out of that, and I would highly recommend it. I am excited about this, but it also puts a lot of stress on the current operators about how they are going to manage that and how they are going to find the workforce, because at the moment we have a workforce that is, like so many other areas, struggling. It is under so much pressure.

And we have governance issues as well. I want to outline a couple of local issues that highlight this. Panton Hill kindergarten is one, Acting Speaker Ward, that you would know quite well. It has for years been under pressure. It is in a smaller area, but it is the closest kindergarten to other areas in my electorate, such as St Andrews, Strathewen and Smiths Gully. That kindergarten is so important because it feeds into St Andrews and Strathewen primary schools and Panton Hill Primary School. It is really important that you have got a local kinder to feed into the local schools so they do not have to move away. In 2020 the program no longer had a suitably qualified staff member to offer kindergarten to children. When that was known, the number of registrations, as you could imagine, started to plummet, and then they got on this downward spiral: they were trying to recruit somebody to fill that role, they were not able to fill it, parents started talking and parents very much worried about what the future of their children’s kindergarten was going to be. The provider that was there tried to recruit for a considerable period of time, until December 2021, without success.

They looked at every avenue. There were members of Parliament contacted. The council was contacted to try and work out how best to come up with a solution. The pressure was such that if it was not found by the end of June, if there was not a solution, this kindergarten could close, and that would have devastating consequences for the primary schools in Panton Hill and other areas. Kangaroo Ground Pre-school was having a look. Finally, council did find a solution: Diamond Creek Memorial Kindergarten taking it on. But council tried to work with the Department of Education and Training since being notified of Sparkways’s intention to divest from the Nillumbik primary schools. I have got to say, the council asked DET to undertake an expression-of-interest process to find new providers, as had been done in the case of the Bestchance divestments; that was refused. They invited them to be on the assessment panel for the EOI, but the request was declined. In February this year they did meet with the reps about the communications plan for families and to explore other possibilities. Now, we did, as I said, find a solution there, which was terrific.

The other issue I want to talk about is governance. I met very recently with Alexandra kindergarten, which has 11 staff, I think. Its committee is finding it really quite overwhelming at times because people have been sick, and there has been a lot of sickness with COVID. Families who are on the committee—it is owned locally; they own the premises and there is no council involvement—are really stressed. The committee is stressed because it thinks it has a bigger job than what it can deal with, so committee members are opting out. The kindergarten is extremely worried that if it cannot get a committee that has the time and effort to put into this, it would have to close. I hear similar things in Mansfield about the shortage of placements in kindergarten and early child care. It puts so much pressure on the communities. We have not been able to have people come to the town because they cannot get placements in kindergarten and child care. There is a lot of concern out there about the future of kindergartens. I do not think we have landed on the right models yet. There is still a lot to be done.

Mr HAMER (Box Hill) (17:25): It is a delight that I rise this evening to contribute on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. At the outset I want to congratulate the minister and her staff for bringing this very important bill to the house today and in particular pay tribute to all of the minister’s work in this space. There are some fantastic initiatives in the early childhood space that this government has delivered, and I dare say it has probably been amongst the most significant policy reforms that we have seen from a government that has made a lot of significant policy reforms. The reforms in the early childhood space will I think certainly have long-lasting effects and be very significant for many, many years to come.

I just wanted to, I suppose, review the purpose of the legislation, the main objectives of the legislation. The bill will amend the Education and Care Services National Law to implement the recommendations arising from the 2019 national quality framework review. It will also amend a number of other pieces of legislation, including the Children’s Services Act 1996 and the Child Wellbeing and Safety (Child Safe Standards Compliance and Enforcement) Amendment Act 2021. The bill’s main objectives, as have been outlined by other speakers, are to implement the outcomes of the review of the national quality framework, which is the national regulatory scheme for early childhood services, and to enable the child safe standards to be enforced in early childhood services by the existing regulator in an integrated manner. These changes are really important to protect and support our early childcare system. It will make it safer for children and lift the quality of services, in particular identifying a range of measures within the family day care space, which is an important element of the early childhood sector, to provide that sort of service for a number of families. In particular it will require family day care coordinators to complete child protection training prior to commencing employment and also enable the regulator to have improved access to information about the types of homes and buildings that family day care operators are working from. The changes, including the compliance and incorporation of the child safe standards, will further embed the protection of children from harm in the everyday practice of the leaders, staff and volunteers.

I want to particularly reflect on our government’s record—the Andrews government’s record, the Labor government’s record—on investment in early childhood education. It is something that has been significant. As I said, in my mind it is probably one of the most significant policy changes that has been developed over the course of the eight years of the Andrews government. It is not a change that will just affect three- and four-year-old children at that particular time. The education that the children receive in that period of time in their lives is long lasting. It will have an effect throughout their education and throughout their lives as adults, having that grounding. I see from my own children now having completed that phase in their life just how much of a difference that was able to make to their level of education, their level of readiness for prep and their level of educational maturity—the ability to provide that universal three-year-old kinder.

And now a universal pre-prep education of 30 hours is just such an invaluable tool and step up that is being provided to our youngest Victorians, allowing all of those Victorians and all of those young students to get the best possible start in life and be ready to take on their prep education, their primary school education and their secondary school education, finish their schooling and go on to further studies and further work in a much stronger position. That is leaving aside obviously all of the other benefits, economic and social benefits, that come from the investment in early childhood education, which of course is particularly pertinent at the moment when we talk about access to the workforce, participation in the workforce and enabling particularly women, who overwhelmingly continue to have a part-time carer and part-time work role for a while before children enter full-time schooling. I know from speaking to many friends and constituents who have children at that age just how much of a barrier it can be when the cost of preschool education is so high that working an extra day to put a child in child care just does not make any financial sense. So having that access to the universal free kinder program is a huge bonus from a social, an economic and an educational perspective.

I do also want to give a shout-out to a number of our local early childhood providers. We have some fantastic local kinders in the Box Hill electorate who provide an outstanding level of care. I happened to visit one last week, the Goodstart Early Learning centre in Mont Albert. I was invited down for Book Week, and I think the children got a bit of a surprise when Harry Potter turned up. I am not sure if they really knew who Harry Potter was, but we did try and surprise them with that. I did manage to somehow keep them occupied and engaged for 20 or 30 minutes, which is probably more than the length of time that I can keep my own children engaged. It just goes to show the level of engagement and participation that occurs at these early childhood centres.

I also want to give a shout-out to the Box Hill North Primary School kinder. This is a facility that has operated since the mid-1990s. It was really, I guess, a precursor to the policy that the Andrews government introduced over the last few years in terms of the co-location of kinders with primary schools to avoid the double drop-off. There was a lot of foresight in the Box Hill North community some 25 years ago or so when they established the kinder on site. There are some fantastic building works which are going on for the primary school, and it will be an easy transition linking the kinder at that school site with the primary school, not only making it easier for parents to do the single drop-off but particularly easing the transition for the children. Already Box Hill North Primary was one of the schools that runs a language program within their four-year-old kinder program. They teach Japanese through the primary school, and they are teaching it in the kindergarten as well. This just further enhances the transition from those early childhood learnings through to the primary school. There are many good elements of the bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms Connolly interjected.

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (17:35): No, I would not like to be the member for Tarneit. I would much prefer to have one-sixth of the state under my jurisdiction, and we have a fabulous region over in far-western Victoria. But one of the biggest challenges that we do have in our region is access to child care. In fact in most of our region—whether you look in the northern part of the Lowan electorate, through the Grampians region, or you look in the south through the Glenelg region, as it has been classified, under the Mitchell Institute’s paper, which has been cited regularly throughout this debate—we are well and truly within a childcare desert. If you look at the map that was produced by the Mitchell Institute, most of far-western Victoria is in the deep red. The deep red represents zero access to child care in most areas of my electorate.

We know the population is dispersed greatly across far western Victoria. The further you get from Melbourne, the farther apart people tend to live, and you can travel many, many kilometres before you even see a house in my part of the state. However, that does not mean that people who choose to live in far western Victoria should not have an opportunity to have equitable access to child care. Particularly they need to have equitable access to child care because we know that there is such a close linkage between female workforce participation and access to child care. I would like to specifically focus on the areas of my electorate of Minyip, Murtoa and Rupanyup. This area is known as Dunmunkle region. They have a number of childcare workers who actually live in this area, but they do not have a childcare facility to be able to work from. As a result, we have got a lot of workers who actually leave that region of Minyip, Murtoa and Rupanyup, drive their children to Horsham to drop them off and then drive to Warracknabeal to work in a childcare facility there. At the end of the day they drive back to Horsham to pick up their kids and go back to Dunmunkle. So they are basically unable to access child care. Their nearest childcare centre is about 40 minutes to an hour away.

Yarriambiack council have done a fabulous job in trying to advocate and secure funding to build a purpose-built childcare facility in that local area. They have been fabulous advocates. It was originally under the advocacy of the former CEO, Jessie Holmes. Now Tammy is doing a fabulous job of continuing to pursue that. I know that the minister has recently agreed to meet with Yarriambiack Shire Council to try and progress this fabulous opportunity to build a childcare facility in the Dunmunkle area, most likely to be located in Murtoa. However, when they wrote and they provided it—they actually applied for a grant for childcare infrastructure, early years infrastructure—they were told, ‘No, you’re not eligible because you’re not in a growth corridor’. My message to this government is that it does not matter if you are in a growth corridor or not. If women are unable to go to work because they cannot secure child care, then it is prohibiting them—

Ms Thomas: Which is a federal government responsibility, and your mob had nine years to fix it.

Ms KEALY: I will take up the interjection from the Minister for Health because the Minister for Health has made a comment that this is not a state responsibility, it is a federal responsibility. I would like to contest that because I am actually referring to a state government fund that was established by this Labor government, and they refused to provide funding to Yarriambiack because it was not in a growth corridor. The women who work in that area, and there are a number of women who have approached me, are ICU nurses, paramedics, agronomists—they are working very, very hard. They would love to do more, but they cannot because they cannot access child care. So while the Minister for Health might try and defend the fact that the Labor government will not invest in childcare facilities in rural and regional Victoria, she actually should be the strongest advocate, because I know of a number of nurses who would be able to go and return to work and take pressure off the healthcare system, which is in utter crisis.

Ms Thomas: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, firstly, the member on her feet is taking up interjections, which you know is unparliamentary, but I would also make the point that the member is actually inaccurate in what she is saying. The Victorian Labor government is investing where the previous federal Liberal-National government failed to deliver the child care that people across rural and regional Victoria need.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Crugnale): The member will continue.

Ms KEALY: Thank you. It is fascinating, isn’t it, to raise a point of order for someone accepting your own interjection, which was also fatally flawed because I have got a letter from Yarriambiack Shire Council that says the state Labor government will not give them funding for a childcare centre because they are not in a growth corridor. They are going to redirect it to city places instead where there is already competition in terms of the availability of childcare centres. So yet again the Minister for Health is missing the point that she could have more nurses working in Wimmera Base Hospital if she supported a new childcare centre in the Dunmunkle region in Murtoa and perhaps even looked at expanding our childcare availability in all of the Lowan electorate.

I look at Horsham: there is actually a three-year waiting list to get your child into child care at the moment. That is a lot of forward planning when it comes to pregnancy to know three years in advance that you are going to need a childcare place. We know that in that region there are 2.59 children per childcare place available. There is a childcare facility in Horsham. It was stricken by fire and needs repairs, but again it was not eligible because it was not in a metropolitan seat. This is completely wrong, because women who live in rural and regional areas absolutely deserve access to child care, because they want to return to work. We have seen similar scenarios in Edenhope in far western Victoria, the town that I grew up in and the town where I was living immediately before I became a member of Parliament. One of the reasons I had to leave Edenhope is that I could not access child care in that town, so that forced me to move to Horsham, where I was able to access some child care for my little boy. There are women in Edenhope who still are unable to access long day care in Edenhope.

One of the challenges is that this legislation is not actually addressing some of the problems around the inconsistencies between ratios and other regulatory matters between family day care, occasional care, long day care and other in-venue care. There really is a massive challenge when it comes to that, and it is not about the actual childcare workers but the sheer level of administration and red tape. I know that that is put in place to try and protect children, but not providing any additional support for childcare workers to be able to meet those requirements and the additional reporting burden upon them is actually a barrier to people operating their own family day care service. As an extreme example, I have been through the fabulous facility at Donald, where they have got two rooms, but there is a limitation. There is a legislative barrier where you cannot have two family day care operators operating under the same roof line, because it is the same address. These are the sorts of things that you do not see as a problem in metropolitan Melbourne, but these are massive challenges when it comes to delivering childcare support in rural and regional Victoria. In Lake Bolac they have had a similar issue in their ability to have continuity of day care services simply because the level of regulatory red tape means that the staff have to put so much time into meeting that administrative burden that it cuts back on the hours where they can actually provide care to people.

I am not saying there should not be any regulation at all. We need to make sure that we are providing a safe environment, that our kids are able to be protected when they are in care and also that parents have peace of mind that their children are safe when they are in care. However, we need to get this balance right, and there are some very, very straightforward, simple solutions that are available to the government that would help to ease the burden and to take pressure off the family day care operators in particular but also all sectors of child care.

What we need more than anything else is more childcare workers. There is so much pressure to be able to train and to get enough workers to deliver all of the childcare programs that are available. In many instances that is the limiting factor rather than infrastructure. And that has been exacerbated by three- and four-year-old kinder. I do not begrudge that program; it is great to have. But there should have been more planning in place to make sure there were sufficient childcare workers so that we were not robbing childcare operators to put in kindergarten places and then ending up with parents who are unable to do it.

Ms Thomas: If only the federal government had done something about it. If only they had done something in the nine years they were in charge of child care.

Ms KEALY: Again, I will take the interjection from the Minister for Health, who again wants to blame the federal government. You know what, it is a federal Labor government now. We have got a state health minister who wants to blame anyone but her own government. You know what, the state government is responsible for a vast number of funds about infrastructure for child care. They refuse to invest in rural and regional areas. They have said, ‘It’s not in a growth corridor’. They have refused to invest in the childcare workforce. Only a Liberal-Nationals government will fix this.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (17:45): Here I am in the flesh, and it is always such a pleasure to follow the member for Lowan. I am going to start by making the point that we had to endure almost a decade of a federal Liberal government who did nothing in the childcare sector and nothing in our aged care sector, including giving these workers a pay rise, for God’s sake. I speak passionately about that because my sister is an early childhood educator. My mother started off as an early childhood educator, and she started off doing family day care at home. My mother-in-law is an early childhood educator and started off doing family day care at home. In fact my husband and I—little did we know at the time; it might have been one of the things that we had in common—grew up as the children of family day carers. We were raised there in the home with our mums, who stayed at home raising us but also raising a whole lot of other kids in the community. Our parents—my mum, Jenny Keys, and my husband’s mum, who is actually at home with my kids right now, Aileen Connolly—are two awesome women that helped raise and educate, I am going to say at least, over the decades that they were early childhood educators, probably hundreds of kids, right? Aileen is now in her 70s, and my mum is close to 70 but still in the 60 age range. Both of them have also gone on to work in aged care. One thing that they both talk about having in common is that workers in early childhood education need a pay rise and workers in aged care also need a pay rise. They are two very lowly paid jobs, but they are absolutely essential workers for our kids at the beginning of their life and for people towards the end of their life. Incredible workers our early childhood educators are, and I give them a huge shout-out. I note that the member for Lowan, in her contribution on this bill, failed to say this once at least with any kind of passion or conviction about these workers.

I cannot discuss this bill, the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, without expressing my emphatic support for our government’s Best Start, Best Life initiative. I can talk about this as the member for Tarneit. I have a lot of credibility in this space because in my community the largest proportion of workers is in the early childhood education space. Folks in Tarneit are working in our kinders as family day care workers and in our long day care centres, doing an incredible job raising the next generation. The Best Start, Best Life initiative is making kinder free for every Victorian child. I would like to think that there is not one parent in this chamber that never, at some time or another, had their kids go to kinder or long day care and then had to make a decision when returning from maternity leave or parental leave: do I do two days or do I do three days? It was all about how much of your wage was going to be eaten up by childcare fees. I worked part time for a decade, and that was a conversation about my kids, who went to child care and then on to kinder. That was a conversation in my household that we had every single year. I remember it clearly.

What we are doing—this government, this side of the house—is we are making kinder free for every Victorian child, along with an extra year of pre-prep kinder. This policy is an absolute game changer for Victorian families, and for so many reasons that people on this side of the house have talked about so passionately this afternoon. This fantastic initiative results in a $2500 a year saving. That is what families are going to save under this program. That is a family holiday for some families. At a time like this, when families are feeling the pressure from the cost of living, this is absolutely huge; it is a game changer. My community is absolutely 100 per cent embracing this. It means more parents will go back to work, especially women, boosting household incomes, and it is going to benefit our economy overall. And let us face it—I am thinking about my kids’ ages, and I worked part-time for a decade—women have been having this conversation and wanting this for a very, very long time. Women in Victoria, I say to you: this announcement is for you. This is going to benefit you while your children are young. This is going to put more money in your family budget at the end of every single week, and it is going to help you in your career. It is going to enable you to work three days instead of two or go back four days instead of three or even five days instead of four. Whatever you want to choose—and it is all about choice—the choice is ultimately up to you.

It is also going to mean jobs in early childhood education. Whether I am doing street stalls or at train stations or I am meeting with constituents, I come in contact with early childhood educators almost every single day as the member for Tarneit, and they are very, very excited about this reform. They are also excited about this reform because our early childhood educators are working with kids, many of whom they know are going to get a better start in life because they are getting that kickstart in their education. This is a really great announcement, and these are the kinds of reforms that Labor governments are known for. As the member for Lowan just mentioned, yes, we do have a federal Labor government now. They have just, I think, checking on Instagram, clicked over 100 days. Federal Labor governments are known for massive amounts of reform that contribute to and raise the quality of life and living for folks here in Australia and Victoria. That is what federal Labor governments do. That is what almost a decade of a federal Liberal government failed to do.

For families living in Tarneit, amendments to early childhood legislation, whether they know about them or it just happens and they go about their daily life—they benefit from them. They are really important, because we are a young electorate. I used to think I was pretty close to the median demographic, but four years on, being in this place and then clocking over the big four-zero in December, I am a little bit older than that demographic. That demographic is two parents, 32 years old with two small kids who are eligible to be in long day care or kinder programs or are at primary school. We are a young community, and young communities need a bit more money in the family budget every week. They need the option when it comes to going to work, because many of them have a mortgage and they need two incomes to pay that. But they also see the benefits of education, early education, early on for their kids. They know that it makes a difference.

It is not just the parents of the kids who are going to benefit from the investment in their education and their needs into the future. We are talking about another year of pre-prep kinder—and I always find it funny saying ‘pre-prep kinder’, because I grew up in New South Wales and I do not think the word ‘kinder’ existed; it was ‘kindy’. I always want to call it ‘kindy’—‘kindy for kids’. I always think that sounds kind of cool.

Mr M O’Brien: You probably like ‘parmy’ as well, don’t you?

Ms CONNOLLY: It is very controversial. I am putting it all on display here this afternoon. We know kindy gives kids a great start in life and, whether they are starting at age three or starting at age four, by the time they get to prep they are able to do a lot better. We know it is going to boost the child’s ability to learn once they start in that primary school, and in my electorate, where there is a huge multicultural melting pot of people from across the world but there are also families who have suffered from generational systemic disadvantage, I know, and early childhood educators know, that from those kids having extra hours, because kinder and this pre-prep are free, those children will benefit most of all. By the time they come to prep they are ready to get that great start and that great education in life. I have talked a lot about how wonderful our government announcement is and given a huge shout-out to our early childhood educators and probably talked very little about this bill, but small changes can always result in big changes overall.

This bill in the end, when it comes down to the core of it, is about making our kids safer when they are in care, whether in family day care, kinder or long day care. It is making them safer. At the end of the day there is no parent that would say that improving the safety of their kids while in care is a bad thing. This is a great, great bill. I commend the minister for bringing it forward, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (17:55): I also rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I will say at the outset I was particularly interested in the contribution earlier this afternoon from my colleague the member for Euroa. I think the member for Euroa shared with the Parliament from the heart and really spoke from the heart about her own experiences. For those interested in understanding more about some of the challenges of the vocational journey of being a member of Parliament, I would commend the member for Euroa’s speech to their consideration.

This bill seeks to enhance the regulatory system for early childhood education in Victoria and nationally. The bill proposes various amendments to several acts, as outlined. This follows the 2019 national quality framework review aimed at ensuring that the NQF continues to meet its objectives and considers the ongoing effectiveness and sustainability of the NQF considering the continuing evolution of the education and care sector. The bill has a number of main provisions, including making a number of amendments to make child care safer for children and lift the quality of services. The bill requires all family day care coordinators to complete child protection training prior to commencing employment. The bill provides for greater access to information about family day care providers by regulatory authorities, in this case the department. The regulator will be able to assess the fitness more rigorously of service providers across the sector. The bill also makes some minor amendments relating to maternal and child health nursing services to require providers of maternal and child health nursing services to employ or engage only if they have a prescribed prerequisite.

In short, this bill is about making several amendments to make child care safer for children and to lift the quality of services. In the consultation that the Liberal-Nationals took in relation to this bill with the early childhood sector and broader stakeholders in Victoria, all of those people that were engaged by us through that consultation period raised no concerns with the bill. As such the opposition will not be opposing the legislation before the Parliament.

I do want to use this opportunity to draw the house’s attention to a number of local matters in my community. I have spoken previously about the circumstance of Bambini Early Learning Centre on Bluff Road in Sandringham. Now, very recently there was a serious accident involving one of the educators at Bambini Early Learning Centre as they attempted to cross Bluff Road on their way to work. Bluff Road is a busy arterial road in my community connecting Beach Road to Nepean Highway. As such it is frequently used, especially at peak times. That particular early learning centre, Bambini on Bluff Road, has over 150 children, and you can imagine at drop-off and pick-up times it is particularly busy for those families and for the people who work at that centre as well.

I am pleased to report that together with my colleague the member for Brighton we wrote to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety expressing concern about the circumstance at Bluff Road at the Bambini Early Learning Centre. Just today we received a positive response from the minister for roads, which I did want to acknowledge in this contribution because the minister for roads has instructed or requested his department, the Department of Transport, to undertake a site investigation of Bluff Road just outside the Bambini Early Learning Centre. They have identified the need for greater warning signs outside the early learning centre. The signs that are proposed will read ‘Preschool’, and I think they will be yellow in colour—and it is a step in the right direction. What the community was looking for was ‘Keep clear’ signs. My understanding from the minister’s correspondence received today is that the request for ‘Keep clear’ signs on Bluff Road outside Bambini Early Learning Centre does not meet the criteria set out by the Department of Transport. But they have compromised, which is a step in the right direction, and I am informed by the minister that some pedestrian warning signs reading ‘Preschool’ will be installed on the approaches to that early learning centre. This is a win—a win for my community and a win for common sense. I thank the minister for his cooperation in this regard.

Recently also I had the great pleasure of visiting the Minnows early learning centre in Beaumaris and presenting them with—well, a couple of months ago at least—some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. It was just wonderful to spend time with the kids there, it really was, and their educators as well, presenting them with those flags and also speaking to them about the importance of those flags. I was very impressed by their knowledge of the Aboriginal flag, actually, and their knowledge of the symbolism of the colours on the flag and a little bit of the history about it as well. We discussed very briefly flag etiquette as well, which I thought was an important thing to do as I did not want national flags of Australia to be dropped on the floor by the kinder kids at the Minnows early learning centre in Beaumaris.

Very recently I have worked with the Sandringham Children’s Centre in Bay Road in Sandringham. There is a rather inappropriate development proposed for just across the road from the Sandringham Children’s Centre in Bay Road, and I have worked with them to add my voice of concern and objection to that proposed development on Bay Road, conveying that to Bayside council.

I want to use the time left to me to remind the house that next Wednesday, 7 September, is in fact Early Childhood Educators’ Day. It is an opportunity for us as a Parliament and for us as a community to celebrate the contribution of early childhood educators. I have my own experience. My kids are at Sandringham Children’s Centre. My goodness, they are marvellous; they really are—the educators there and the centre director, Lauren, those educators that take care of my two children and the children of many other parents in our community.

I just want to give you a sense of the community that we have at that early learning centre, Sandringham Children’s Centre in Bay Road in Sandringham. One of the parents in our WhatsApp group very recently drew everyone’s attention to the fact that next Wednesday, 7 September, is Early Childhood Educators Day, and Sarah, one of the parents, proposed that we get together and send on 7 September some hampers and some platters, lunches, pastries and other delicious sweet treats to the early childhood educators at the Sandringham Children’s Centre. It did not take long after Sarah made that wonderful suggestion for many of the other parents to jump on board and to contribute to that wonderful suggestion. And that is what we are doing—because we as parents recognise the important contribution of early childhood educators to the lives of our own children, and we want to acknowledge that in a particularly special way.

So I think it is terrific that this bill in fact makes several amendments to make child care safer for children and lifts the quality of services in early childhood learning, and as I said, the opposition will not be opposing this bill.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (18:05): It is with some pleasure that I rise this afternoon to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Before I turn my contribution to some of the key issues as I see them in terms of early childhood education, I just want to from the outset reflect on the consequences, effectively, over a very, very long time of the Labor Party putting into this chamber a huge number of women. In fact we now have, I think, more than 50 per cent of members of the Labor Party here in this chamber made up by women, and we have at least 50 per cent of the cabinet made up by women. From my end, when a political party makes decisions like that, as a consequence we see public policy brought to this place that reflects the challenges that women particularly have to deal with in their normal lives as they go about their roles in society. What I have noticed and what I have had the pleasure of observing and witnessing is that a very, very significant proportion of the policy drive of this government has in fact been made by women in our political party driving that reform agenda. Indeed all of the reform work that we are putting in in the early childhood legislation space has been driven, from my observation, by women in our government. I commend the minister in the other place for her significant contribution in this space. I have no doubt that there will be a very large team of empowered women in the bureaucracy providing guidance and advice as she goes about implementing our very, very substantial reform agenda.

I have had an enormous amount of pleasure in being an active father in my kids’ lives, and I have had the opportunity over many years really to engage with my electorate on some of the key challenges. Early childhood education, I think, is one of those great challenges that many families are reflecting on and are considering, particularly in the growth corridor of Geelong, which makes up a very substantial proportion of my seat. What I have found through engagement with those communities is that child care and education, particularly early pre-school education—kinder—is something that is highly sought after. It is highly valued by my families, but it is prohibitively expensive and difficult for families to be able to access in an affordable way. Sadly, those families that find themselves in financial difficulties often cannot afford the quality of care that their kids so desperately deserve. I think this reform will go a long way over the next decade or so to making a huge difference to young people in my electorate.

Some of the modelling that the government has done has identified that it can cost many, many thousands of dollars per child. Indeed the reality is that a large amount of time, generally by women, is dedicated to looking after children, particularly those children who are not old enough to head off to school. Whilst I know women enjoy that experience, the reality is for most of them if they were given that opportunity of going back to work earlier, that would be a huge saving to their household budget. It would also be hugely beneficial, enabling them to take the career steps that they would like to be able to do—not just having a consequence immediately in terms of their take-home pay, but I think importantly in having a profound consequence for their long-term future, particularly in terms of the superannuation contributions that they have not been able to make as a consequence of having to spend that amount of time raising their kids and in the roles that they take on.

I am very pleased that a very well-attuned Labor Party forming government in this place, driven particularly by very energetic and determined women, has very much brought this policy reform to this Parliament. I am very much looking forward to this reform program being legislated through this chamber and the Legislative Council over the next couple of sitting weeks. I am looking forward to us engaging with the federal government to further implement this reform program because I think it is critically important to our community and to our society. For those that consider themselves economists, this will of course, I am sure, tickle their fancy. It will very much lead to productivity gains for our nation. It will see those young people provided with a quality of education that otherwise they would not have received, meaning that our country and indeed our state will be able to compete on a global stage in a far stronger way than what we would have been able to do otherwise. That provides a very clear tangible outcome for our state and indeed for our country.

As I was saying a little earlier, I had the opportunity of participating: doing the drop-offs with my kids at kinder and spending some of my time with them when they were at that age. I would very much like to see more men taking an active role in this part of the journey of fatherhood. I think we are seeing more men participating, which is a good thing, and I hope that into the future it becomes a more normal practice for that to happen. That is a good thing as well for those children. I also think, when I reflect on my seat, of all those thousands of families that are making their way to the southern growth corridor of Geelong. I have no doubt we will need to see more kinders, more childcare centres and more women given that opportunity to become early childhood educators. Certainly down in my part of the world the majority of those in that industry are women, and I commend them for their work.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (18:15): I too rise to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. There have been some really great, insightful contributions thus far. I too call on the federal government, as I am sure it will, being Labor and all, to join our progressive state in doing a lot more in the early childhood and pre-prep space. The character of a government is never more important than when it is caring about people who do not vote or cannot vote, making decisions for those who are vulnerable and who have no right of reply. Think of the most vulnerable person you know and vote in their best interests. Our children cannot vote, and it is our responsibility to do everything we can to protect them. That is why this legislation is so important. This legislation in part addresses issues identified in the national quality framework review. Extensive consultation with the sector nationally has led to these amendments, and if they are not passed in Victoria, services across the country will be affected. Time is tight. If this bill is not passed in Victoria this year, the implementation date of July 2023 will not be met despite national agreement from all education ministers.

There is nothing controversial, as we have heard in previous contributions, in this legislation. Safety measures in family day care are paramount. Who could dispute that we need to do everything we can to keep our youngest Victorians safe? Surely no-one would argue against requiring family day care coordinators to complete child protection training before commencing employment and to undertake an annual refresher course. It is our responsibility as a government to ensure that when a parent leaves their child at day care and walks out that front gate we have done everything we can to keep the child safe. Although Victoria recorded the second-lowest rate of serious incidents in 2020–21, we know that any serious incident is one too many, and this bill addresses gaps between the national principles for child safe organisations and the national law to require that all family day care coordinators complete that child protection training prior to commencing employment. My little ones went through family day care in Brunswick actually, many, many, many years ago—not quite last century but almost.

A very sensible inclusion in this bill is the extension of duration of the highest rating for an education and care service from three to five years. While services are always striving to achieve recognition, we know how much work goes into qualifying for an excellent rating, and extending the validity period acknowledges this. As of June just this year 90 per cent of Victorian services with a quality rating received an overall rating of ‘meeting national quality standard’ or above. Five Victorian services have been rated as excellent and 28 per cent of services have an ‘exceeding national quality standard’ rating. There are currently no services with the lowest rating of ‘significant improvement required’.

I am also proud of our government’s commitment to early childhood, the most precious years, with unprecedented investments across the state this year. We are investing $5 billion into funding universal three-year-old kinder, expanding access to 15 hours of kinder every week and including $1.68 billion for infrastructure—and of course building the workforce of educators and teachers to support all the work that we are doing in this space as well. There is a further $9 billion to make three- and four-year-old kindergarten free in participating centres from 2023—

A member interjected.

Ms CRUGNALE: I know, it is amazing—the Best Start, Best Life program, early childhood education that works—building 50 government-run, low-fee childcare centres in areas of greatest demand, and many of them are being built alongside schools. The benefits are obvious for parents and children: a seamless transition from preschool to primary school with their friends alongside, ensuring connections from a young age and reducing the stress that change can bring at an early age as well, and staying in the community with familiar faces. What is great also is that in a lot of our kinders they are learning the same languages as their neighbouring primary schools. Pearcedale preschool is an example. I was there recently with the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister Stitt. They are doing Auslan, and Pearcedale Primary School, the school just across the road and down a bit, has a really amazing deaf program and everyone is learning Auslan there as well.

Talking about connections further, I would like to also take this opportunity to give a shout-out to the San Remo Preschool, which the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep and I visited last week. We were welcomed by committee of management president Nikole Schellekens and super fabulous members of the committee and educators and teachers extraordinaire. All of them are so dedicated, professional, inspiring and amazing, and they are thrilled about the Best Start, Best Life initiative that our government has invested in. And they, through our investment, are going from 5 to 15 hours next year. So a big thanks to committee members Kim, Tayla, Melissa and Jodie and educators Bethanie, Nadine, Belinda, Corinne, Emma, Annette and Amy.

As I mentioned, we also visited the Pearcedale kinder, and we were met there by Virginia Lloyd, who is the manager of child, youth and family, City of Casey; the team leader, Jenna; Melanie; and also the early childhood teachers and educators, Rebecca, Yasuko and Julie. That was great. It was Book Week and everyone was dressed up as superheroes. The minister said to one of the little ones that she had a sore arm, so she was taken off to the Pearcedale little hospital in the corner and was told to put her mask on again; she was suitably bandaged up and was feeling much better after a session with the three-year-old medical doctor.

I would like to acknowledge also the wonderful Drysdale Street Kindergarten. It is an existing kindergarten that is co-located with Wonthaggi Primary School. It is undergoing a much-needed expansion, and that will offer 50 approved places when the expansion is completed in 2023. The Labor government funded an additional 33-place kinder room as well as administrative facilities and outdoor play areas so the children can engage in nature, stay active, have that agency as well and build their self-confidence and enjoy high-quality learning environments. It is a great example of why we co-locate childcare centres and kinders with primary schools. It certainly makes the day a lot easier with pick-up and drop-off and all that.

We are also building a new kinder at Newhaven Primary School. This two-room centre will provide 66 kinder places. Like the member for Tarneit, I grew up in WA, and it was kindy for us, so I am getting used to saying ‘kinder’. But this kinder will open out to an outdoor learning and play space.

A member interjected.

Ms CRUGNALE: Yes, it was ‘kindy’ in WA. In fact, when I was there recently my Albany community kindergarten—kindy—was still there. It still looks the same, and I had fond memories as I walked past the kindy that I went to over 50 years ago—no, less than 50 years ago.

Special mention goes also to the Clyde township family and community centre. That is due to open in 2023 in partnership with the City of Casey, which will provide essential services, including kindergarten and maternal and child health, as well as multipurpose community spaces. Ninety per cent of brain development occurs before the age of five, and we know the value of early education and transitioning to four-year-old play-based pre-prep to giving our youngsters the best start that they can have. From my larger communities of Pakenham and Wonthaggi to my smaller towns around Lang Lang and surrounds, our kids will have the very best start to their education.

Let me just make sure to put on the record that from next year, because of the commitment from the Labor government, all families with three- and/or four-year-olds—because many of the families have three- and four-year-olds—will pay nothing for kinder, which is a saving of up to $2500 for every year. And I tell you what, that is resonating remarkably in the electorate of Bass. As was also mentioned before, when we look at it in the economic sense, there are 26 000 to 28 000 women that will have a choice to go back to work, and that has got a huge economic benefit as well. That is another cost-of-living program being delivered by the Andrews Labor government. I tell you what, the grandparents are pretty happy about this one as well, because they know about the cost of living for their kids and their families.

Even last month we announced a $1 million expansion of the early childhood initiatives program, and the Department of Education and Training has engaged a panel of five recruitment agencies to support services to fill vacancies across Victoria in 2022–23. I am literally running out of time. I totally commend the bill to the house. I love kindy.

Mr BRAYNE (Nepean) (18:25): I also rise today to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. Obviously the Victorian government is committed to strengthening the safety of children in early childhood services and improving the sector overall. In fact this is probably one of the most important things a state government can and should do. This bill will help improve the overall compliance and oversight tools necessary for the regulating authority in Victoria to effectively carry out its duties. Amendments included in this bill will lead to significant improvements in practices, qualifications and the overall awareness of the quality of services. Simply, the bill will effectively implement the outcomes of the review of the national quality framework and enable child safe standards to be enforced in the sector.

One way it will do this is by better enabling the regulator to do its job more effectively. Working to improve the early childhood sector is something this government takes very seriously. The Andrews government has prioritised, really in an unprecedented way, support for early childhood education. We have set aside $5 billion to fund universal three-year-old kinder right across the state, an enormous achievement that will radically transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of families across Victoria and many in my community of Nepean. We are also building 50 government-run low-fee childcare centres in high-growth areas where the demand is also unprecedented. A lot of these centres are being built next to government schools so that parents do not have to worry about travelling across their local suburb or township to do the school drop-off and pick-up. Additionally, these reforms will help create more than 11 000 new jobs in the early childhood sector—a big win for teachers and educators and families right across our state.

So how did we get here and why are these changes happening now? Firstly, it is a national framework and amendments required by Victoria need to go through the Parliament in the form of this bill. All state and territory education ministers agreed on the changes recommended by the national quality framework review and that they must commence next year. This bill is what Victoria must do to implement its end of what was agreed to in the framework. Enforcement of the new child safe standards is indeed more urgent, and the regime for enforcing compliance with this will commence on 1 January next year. The bill will put in place necessary powers for the regulator, as I have mentioned, to enhance the sector’s commitments to child safe standards and regulations.

With that in mind it is also important to note that consultation on this bill has been exemplary. The sector is supportive of the bill. Feedback from stakeholders who partook in the national quality framework review is that they understand the intentions of the bill and support those efforts to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of children in the sector. National stakeholder engagement and feedback was conducted back in 2019 all the way through to 2021. The Commission for Children and Young People was consulted over the changes to the child safe standards provisions for enforcement, while stakeholders in the child safe standards sector were strongly supportive of the desire to integrate regulations and reduce red tape.

My community has benefited enormously over these past few years, with significant investments made to childcare centres and preschools across my electorate of Nepean, including almost $160 000 for Sorrento Preschool under the inclusive kindergartens facilities program and $25 000 towards Dromana Pre-School’s expansion of their main room and new entrance area. These come on top of the main investments this government has made across the board in school readiness grants and the Building Blocks program, which have also enormously benefited childcare centres in my community in Capel Sound and Rye.

There are many elements of being a local member of Parliament that I enjoy, particularly being a local member for an area where I have always been local, and getting to know the childcare centres in my community of Nepean has been a real privilege. Growing up on the peninsula I got to spend my own childhood at Balnarring Pre-School. My times there were great—really outdoorsy. I still remember my kindergarten teachers, Christine and Cherie, and I am sure many kids there today are receiving the same great care, teachings and experiences that I had. Visiting other kinders on the southern peninsula has also really been a treat. Whether it has been for a book read, a chat with the kids, a chat with the staff or one of my Easter egg hunts, the visits to kinders have really been among the highlights as I look back over the last four years.

Dromana Preschool is always so welcoming when I visit. I recall my first visit there was to do the official opening of its new upgraded building. I got the chance to read a book called Piranhas Don’t Eat Bananas, which was evidently a favourite among the room. I quickly learned that children at that age were very engaged with stories that are really silly. Who would have guessed? On my last visit to Dromana Preschool, where I held my Easter egg hunt this year, I observed the kids playing ‘Melbourne Train’. This was a game I was unfamiliar with, but it soon became clear to me that the kids walked around in a circle to a song. The music would stop when the announcer said things like ‘Now arriving at Dandenong station; now arriving at Frankston station’. I told the educators I thought this was a great idea for a song, but they needed to make sure the kids were aware of all the level crossing works that were taking place on those lines. Incorporate those into the song somehow. I do not know how, but incorporate those ones in.

At Rye Preschool I am always warmly welcomed every time I visit by Julie. Julie is someone I have become good friends with during my time in this role as the member for Nepean. Rye has been a welcoming place since 2018. I have been there for many book reads, Easter egg hunts and playground conversations with the little kids over the past couple of years.

The other preschool that I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time at is Waterfall Gully. Tamar is a stalwart for the Rosebud and Waterfall Gully community. Her preschool provides families with a wonderful atmosphere and support, which sees families work really hard to try and get their child into her preschool. I have had many wonderful experiences at Waterfall Gully Preschool and commend all the teachers there and Tamar on their incredibly hard work.

There is of course so much more to do. Preschools like Tootgarook need assistance to plan for the future, to be supported to continue their hard work. I have spoken to Deb at Toot preschool multiple times. We continue to push for their preschool to have a visit from council to set in motion a plan for its future. Finally on the local preschools, a shout-out to Kerry for her long service at Flinders Preschool. Kerry is a friend through her son—because as we know on the peninsula, everyone knows someone who knows someone. Kerry retired just before the pandemic, which was probably good timing, but before her retirement we did a book read there. I wish Kerry all the best with her retirement.

Investments must continue to be made in child care and the early childhood education sector to ensure we are giving kids the best possible start in life. Your postcode should not determine the quality of your early childhood education, not in Victoria. We are getting on with these reforms and investments because Victorian families deserve the very best. As I said just before, I am working hard with Tootgarook Preschool to get better facilities and support for their small but tight-knit community. I visited their site on a number of occasions and met with staff to hear their concerns. I will be continuing to work with the local council to urge them to make their facility a priority for an upgrade, and I will keep working with the state government on any support that we can give them.

These preschools and childcare centres that I have gotten to know so well will benefit from these amendments, along with the families that utilise them. With many families moving down to the Mornington Peninsula, facilities like these need to thrive. I am proud to say that these amendments do just that. The proposed amendments are reasonable and should be supported in this place. I want to focus on a handful of them now so the house understands their importance. Amendments around family day care are critically important. This is where regulation needs to be strengthened, with recommendations from the national quality framework review finding that this is a space with an over-representation of incidents and problems. Similarly, amendments within this bill will require family day care coordinators to complete child protection training prior to beginning their employment. On top of this they will also need to do annual training.

We will not hesitate in implementing reasonable and simple changes to better protect children in early childhood. Providing the regulator with improved capabilities to undertake its work is where the amendments in this bill will really deliver. Under these proposed changes the regulator will have improved and enhanced access to information about the way family day care providers operate, including details about the facilities they are working from, which will hopefully assist in emergencies. Additionally, providers and services will only need to deal with the existing regulator, reducing red tape and ensuring they can focus on better compliance with child safe standards.

Protecting children from harm and abuse must be embedded within the practices, ethos and protocols of family day care practices. That is what these amendments enable us to do. The amendments I have outlined are practical, sensible, substantial reforms across the early childhood sector. They must be supported by everyone in this place. They should be supporting efforts to critically strengthen the regulations and safety measures across children’s services. Furthermore, these amendments have been drafted, as I said, following a significant period of consultation with stakeholders across the sector. This bill seeks to ensure greater protections of children in early childhood services. It strengthens the safety and oversight regulations of the sector and improves the Victorian regulation authority in this space. It is critical this bill passes the Parliament in order for these provisions to be rolled out from 1 January next year. It is with great pride that I commend this bill to the house.

Ms SULEYMAN (St Albans) (18:35): Each and every day since being elected the Andrews Labor government has continued to build an education system that makes sure that no student or child is left behind. This government continues to invest in the education sector, from making kinder free to investing in our primary schools, transforming VCE and most recently our announcement to pay the HECS for students enrolling in nursing and midwifery at university. Each of these investments is transformative for our state and makes further commitments to making sure that education is integral in Victoria. We are building strong foundations for future generations and making sure that our state has the skills and the talents it needs to continue to thrive now and into the future.

Every child, as I said earlier on, deserves the best start regardless of the postcode that they live in and every chance to begin their first steps in early childhood. We know that the early years of children’s lives are the most important for their learning and for their development in the coming years. The early years are the foundation for lifelong learning and experiences, when children develop skills and confidence through interactions with other children, playing games and through programs and supports from their teachers and making kinder free from 2023. I know in my electorate of St Albans this has been a significant burden and a significant financial stress for families. With the cost of living, the increases each and every day and the pressures, whether it is household bills or the stress of rents, mortgages and so on, we know that free kinder and easing the pressure for families is very important to us. So policies that this government has created will change and ease cost-of-living pressures, on the other side of course meaning that more kids will get the best start for the best life and more parents will be able to get back into the workforce, boosting productivity within the Victorian economy. So it is good for the local economy, but it is a statewide boost as well.

We know that kinder should be an exciting time, and one of the best parts of my job, I find, is when I visit kindergartens and see childcare centres and in particular our investment—a close to $9 billion investment—easing the burden on families and creating fantastic new facilities. It also creates job opportunities, and we have seen already 11 000 jobs for early childhood educators. We will also help to make the transition from kinder to school easier, because we know that there needs to be a rollout of pre-prep programs across the state. This will occur by 2032. In the initial stages of a child’s life it is always a big step for children from kindergarten to actually transition to prep. So this is a fantastic initiative that we have put forward to our communities, and I have received nothing but welcoming and congratulations in relation to this initiative on its own.

We know that these reforms are much needed, because we know our local communities are supportive of these reforms, and it is part of making sure that our kids can continue to grow and really strive for those opportunities. So strengthening the regulations is absolutely important, and we know that our early childhood educators work very hard to make kinder a safe and caring place for all kids. They go beyond their jobs each and every day in supporting families and children. The amendments in this bill will provide an extra safeguard for kids in these spaces.

Also, all family day care coordinators will now need to complete child protection training and undertake a refresher course each year, and that is really important to make sure that they are up to date with new regulations or new initiatives that appear each year. It will also make it easier for regulators to work much more collaboratively with others in the sector to monitor and enforce compliance with child safe standards. We know how important that is, and there is nothing more important than the safety of our children.

As I said, one of the most important bits of my job is to visit childcare centres, and I had the pleasure of joining the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep in the other place to visit some of the centres that we have made significant investment in across St Albans, and that included, just last month, Phoenix Street childcare centre in Sunshine North, making sure that that particular precinct becomes not only a childcare centre but also a children’s and community centre which incorporates a childcare centre, so a one-stop shop. This is not something that is not familiar for St Albans. We have invested in Ardeer kindergarten, a brand new building next door to Ardeer Primary School, again with the concept of one stop for parents to be able to drop off their kids at kinder or a childcare centre and also next door to a primary school. That is really important. That saves the traffic and saves the travel time for families. I want to thank the educators at Ardeer kindergarten for their fantastic programs. I really had much joy in visiting their centre a couple of months ago. All this is part of the government’s Building Blocks grant program. I must commend the minister for early childhood in the other place for her contribution and commitment to early childhood education in Victoria. This is truly a historic moment where we see early childhood at the centre of education and development in this state.

As I said, we have not stopped investing for a moment since being elected. Whether it be in our centres, whether it be in our schools or whether it be in our educators, we have made many, many investments and funding opportunities. I want to thank in particular Narmada, Nireen, Lina, Sohaila and Fatimo, who I had the opportunity to meet at Phoenix Street childcare centre just recently, but also all our early childhood sector workers across St Albans, including from Acacia childcare centre, which is just across the road from my electorate office. They do a fantastic job each and every day in supporting and really developing our youngest in our communities and the most important in our communities, who are our children.

I think these amendments in this bill, as I said, will clarify the requirements for educators and, most importantly, facilities across our communities and ensure the most effective means of promoting compliance and safer places and practices to improve their service delivery. As I mentioned, we have seen massive investment across this sector, particularly in my electorate of St Albans, and we continue to develop programs that address early childhood development. It is so important that our kids have positive, supportive educators and, most importantly, facilities as well that promote and foster better learning outcomes in our community. We certainly have done that since we have been elected. We have seen in just about every education centre in St Albans—every school, primary school—an investment in and a commitment across the electorate of St Albans when it comes to facilities. That also includes our early childhood centres. Whether it be existing centres or whether it be new builds, we certainly have seen a massive boost in the electorate of St Albans. In conclusion— (Time expired)

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (18:45): I am sure the member for St Albans commends the bill to the house.

Ms Suleyman: That’s right.

Mr EDBROOKE: And over to Frankston. It is definitely my pleasure to rise and speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022. I do this in the context that we have heard a lot about the early childhood sector in the last few hours, but this is part of what we term the ‘Education State’ for a lot of us, especially the former practising teachers amongst us. It is part of this government’s landmark agenda, a visionary agenda and an agenda that leaves a huge legacy—not just from a government perspective, where we can say we have done this, and for schools, which can say they are part of it, but for a generation of children, from perinatal to 18, that have been through a school system that is constantly being upgraded. That school system starts from birth obviously, but we know that, as we have heard many members in the house talk about, brain development and physical development in the early years is quite amazing, until at least age five. That is where the most important learning happens, whether that be social or whether that be towards the curriculum. It means that if we can access children and point them in the right direction and activate that lifelong learning at that level, we are doing them a hell of a favour.

As part of that agenda, we have heard that we are making kindergarten programs free from 2023 and increasing access to early childhood and quality childhood education across Victoria. That means providing more choices to Victorian families, where they will save money as well. Instead of putting children in child care, they can actually put their children in kindergarten and access 15 hours free as well. That might well be in one of the 50 new government-run childcare centres that will be available in those childcare deserts that have been spoken about so many times. We are going to transition that kindergarten model into a pre-prep model, with 30 hours of learning by 2032, creating that high-quality universal program that we have been aspiring to. We have heard, again, a fair bit about that today, and we have heard about the rollout of that 15 hours of three-year-old kinder.

One of the things, as a former educator, that I would like to point out is that it is not all about the core educational part of this—that we are accessing children and engaging them at that age with the curriculum. It is also about the diagnostics and that early intervention, when we find that a child might be on the spectrum, they might have different abilities, their eyesight might not be 20/20, their hearing might not be great, they might have learning difficulties, they might be at risk at home or they might have physical or mental delays in their development. It is often in prep that these kinds of conditions are picked up. I know this firsthand. There are children that will be in primary school and that might get to grade 1 or 2 before it is first diagnosed that they have an eyesight problem, because they have trouble reading when they are not sitting up the front. Sometimes it is very hard to diagnose a child with a mild hearing condition. That might not be picked up for a while as well.

Those learning difficulties, or even kids that learn differently, are often not picked up until those children learn in a curriculum context as well. Take what we are doing and put it in that frame. We will have children that will no doubt come to three-year-old kinder and four-year-old kinder, and whether it be run by the government in those 50, with the 15 hours, or the 30 hours at four-year-old kinder, pre-prep, they will be able to be—hopefully—diagnosed a lot earlier, because we will be challenging their intellect and we will pick up things like their ears, their eyes and differences in learning, and that is a really, really powerful tool. When you consider that most women with autism or who are on the spectrum are picked up so much later in life, often when they are adults, versus men—the cues that often come out are a lot more obvious in men or boys; in women it is often seen as nervousness or as being withdrawn—being able to have specialist educators who have done the training and know what to look for is key to this. That is something that we are already seeing in primary schools and we are already seeing in kinders, but having kids that sometimes would not get the chance to go to kinder come to three-year-old kinder, we are going to see a lot more diagnoses coming out of that, catching these issues earlier and being able to help children a lot earlier so that they do not experience the delay that they might have experienced. I mean, everyone in this chamber knows of a child that could not read in grade 6 and then in year 7 went to a different school and was diagnosed with something or was given a pair of glasses. I have even seen that in local schools in Frankston. The success of one particular student in a primary school in Frankston was attributed to the Glasses for Kids program that this government runs. Unfortunately that child has broken two sets of glasses already so we are looking for some more funding for those glasses, but the difference they made was astounding. It will happen at this level too.

Now to the nuts and bolts of the bill. We have heard a lot about the bill amending legislation arising from recommendations from the national quality framework review and other policy decisions. The NQF basically operates as a national law scheme, and the states are responsible for enacting that law as the host jurisdictions. That is in a schedule to the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 I believe. The bill also makes changes to the national law to give effect to the amendments by strengthening the safety of children in early childhood services and addressing gaps between the national principles for child safe organisations and NQF, and it requires that all family day care coordinators complete child protection training prior to commencing employment. This might seem to be something that is very basic, something that could be overlooked—and I think it has been overlooked nationally. You only have to go back in the memory banks, even for a year, to hear about children left in cars, children on roads, children unsupervised in registered childcare and family day care centres, so this is only a good thing. It provides oversight and compliance tools as well, which are all very important.

Another fantastic part of this bill are the amendments relating to the child safe standards. The standards obviously are there to drive cultural change. It is pretty obvious, but we should do anything we can do to ensure that children are safe and we do not have any of the accidents—or, if you will, incidents, which is probably a better term for them—happen. That means looking at the practice of leaders, of their teams and of their staff—how they do things—and constantly improving, along with that new set of child safe standards that were put in place from 1 July 2022.

Another fantastic part of this bill are the amendments to the act relating to the maternal and child health nursing services—a wonderful service. Everyone is talking about their children so why can’t I? They always loved going to the maternal and child health service to see where their child was, in what percentile and whatnot. I am sure it became a bit of a competition for some of the people in kindergarten, but for those nurses—I think you need a special kind of person. Often they are the first line; they are at the coalface where they notice things about children that need to be acted upon or families that need to be acted upon too. The bill basically enables incorporation of the Maternal and Child Health Service Guidelines 2019 into the regulations. That basically provides the integrated framework and approach to service delivery in Victoria and outlines the qualification and registration requirements for maternal and child health nurses.

Just on that, I will finish up with the amazing announcement on Sunday that the government will effectively pay for people to do a nursing course. I have got an 18-year-old, and all of a sudden she is looking at nursing. She was looking at becoming a paramedic, but she comes from good nursing stock. Her grandmother and grandfather were both nurses. They rang her up and said, ‘You should definitely look into this’. It was the first time in my house we had a political conversation about something the Andrews government was doing that I did not bring up, but my 17-year-old daughter brought it up with me, saying, ‘How do I get on the list? How do I do it?’. So I hope to see another generation of nurses who will be specialised in that maternal and child health sense as well, and I very much commend this bill to the house.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (18:55:365:): It gives me great pleasure to join the member for Frankston and previous speakers to speak on the Early Childhood Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 and, most importantly, to have had the opportunity to listen to the member for Frankston, especially for his insights as a former educator. I also realise that in this house in 2018 we had a few educators join.

It has been such an exciting year for early childhood education in Victoria and for our youngest Victorians and their families. Talking about families, I also like to think of my family as one of those families with young children—eight, six and nearly two years old, Sofia—who will no doubt have the benefit and experience throughout their childhood life, through prep and also high school. It was such a proud moment—the announcement from the Andrews Labor government that kindergarten will be free for three- and four-year-old children. Free kinder will save families money and help Victorian children get the best start in life, and as we have already heard from previous contributors here, that is such a wonderful thing. Free kinder for three-year-olds means 5 to 15 hours per week of kinder programs, and four-year-olds will transition from four-year-old kinder to pre-prep, with 30 hours of learning by 2032, creating a high-quality, universal program to give four-year-old kids opportunities to learn through play. It is truly amazing. It is an amazing investment in our youngest Victorians and one that I am so proud of.

I am so extremely proud of this government’s investment in our early learning centres in Clarinda and in the south-east. If I may just say, there is a $2 million investment, through the Building Blocks capacity-building stream grant, in Dingley Village in the electorate of Clarinda to increase kindergarten places. Through this we have created more than 300 new three- and four-year-old kindergarten places, helping families in Dingley Village get their kids into early childhood learning, which is a huge boost to our local community. The project itself is amazing and will provide three early childhood education and care rooms and supported and community-operated playgroups. It includes two 33-place kindergarten rooms and one 24-place occasional care room; maternal and child health, immunisation sessions and new parents groups; the Dingley Village Neighbourhood Centre; a reception area, administration offices, collaborative planning spaces and meeting rooms; and, most importantly, flexible community meeting spaces to facilitate the delivery of allied health and family support services. As I said, this is a huge boost to our community, and I know that this funding is well received by my community in Dingley Village.

I thank the Kingston council for their collaboration on the project. The development will be co-located with the existing Kingston council library. The Dingley centre itself is one of the six centres to share almost $10 million, getting more kids into kindergarten and ensuring that they will get the best start— (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am required under sessional orders to interrupt business now. The member may continue their speech when the matter is next before the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.